The Impact of Biotechnology on Surgery in the 1990s

Medical practice is generally divided into medical and surgical sub-groups based on therapeutic approaches. Physicians in medically oriented specialities, such as internal medicine and paediatrics, traditionally rely largely on drugs to influence the course of disease while general and speciality surgeons usually have some type of surgical procedure at the core of their discipline. (Obviously, these are gross generalisations; surgeons have long been at the forefront of the use of antibiotics and nutritional support.) But these distinctions are becoming increasingly blurred as cardiologists guide catheters into ever smaller vessels and gastroenterologists send fibreoptic scopes into yet other ducts and snare would-be cancers from ever more remote parts of the gut. The recent explosion in scientific knowledge will continue to fuel this trend. Greater understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of disease inevitably leads to a simpler approach to diagnosis and therapy.