Why do not we talk about MIS fellowship? A short review of the short literature

Abstract

Background

The minimally invasive surgery (MIS) fellowship has existed for three decades and has steadily grown in both number of positions available and variety of techniques practiced. Despite continued popularity, growth, and wide breadth of surgical techniques of the MIS fellowship, publication rates in medical journals regarding these fellowships have not been as robust as one may expect. Our goal was to review the available literature on MIS fellowship.

Methods

We reviewed PubMed to search for articles pertinent for MIS fellowship. The initial search included “MIS fellowship” “minimally invasive surgery fellowship” and “laparoscopy fellowship.” Articles pertaining to MIS fellowship were then reviewed by title and abstract for content. Articles were excluded from subsequent analysis if they focused on disciplines that were not direct extensions of general surgery (such as urology, gynecology, oncology). Using similar search techniques, we tabulated unfiltered publications rates specific to other major surgical fellowship disciplines. The metric articles per position was created by dividing the total number articles for each discipline by the annual fellowship positions

Results

An initial review of available literature produced 134 articles pertinent to MIS fellowship. Further analysis for direct relevance to MIS yielded only 58 published articles. MIS had the fewest number of publications and smallest APP, 0.7, of any of the major fellowship disciplines.

Conclusions

There is a surprising dearth of material on MIS fellowship. While, MIS fellowship is a one-year experience, we have the opportunity to build on three decades of clinical experience to continue optimize the fellow experience and improve subspecialized surgical training and patient outcomes. This could be facilitated through broadened focus of inquiry and publication of findings.