Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery is the recent and exciting development in minimally invasive surgery. It purports to offer abdominal surgery in a scarless manner.
Still at the experimental phase, it has been heralded as the next step in minimal access surgery.
Patients may be offered many of the currently performed procdures without the need for any abdominal scars.
Procedures currently being developed include:
Development and refinement of the equipment required is currently under way.
There is likely to be much excitement and patient interest when these procedures are offered as an alternative to traditional laparoscopic surgery.
The pace of surgical development is such that operations which laparoscopy revolutionised could now be described as traditional.