For the first time in Canada, doctors at Vancouver General Hospital successfully sutured a patient using a new Overstitch device.
“It’s very important,” Dr. Roberto Trasolini, a therapeutic endoscopist at VGH, told Global News.
“The field that is my specialty, therapeutic endoscopy, we’ve had a lot of advances over the last 10 or 15 years, and it allows us to perform essentially mini-surgeries without incisions. We take out early cancers. We bypass blockages in the GI tract, allow people to eat again. We can create new connections or sometimes avoid surgery in really frail patients.”
Trasolini said the devices doctors have had to stitch things closed before had some limitations and this Overstitch device allows surgeons to be more secure in their work.
Trasolini said doctors can place the Overstitch device at the end of a scope and sutures can then be performed internally.
“So you can use it in the stomach, the esophagus, the colon, you can use it in kind of the deeper parts of the intestines as well, but it’s just difficult to get there,” he said.
Trasolini added that it can be used to close defects or fix stents and in procedures to reshape the stomach or esophagus.
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He not only performed the first Overstitch suturing in Canada but also completed specialty training and two fellowships in advanced endoscopy.
Trasolini said his patients who have received this suturing have been able to travel without worrying their stent will slip while they are on vacation and having to obtain medical care in another country.
While the device has been used in the U.S. and other countries around the world, Trasolini only performed the first procedure in Canada in April.
“My hope and dream is that we take full advantage of all the technologies that we have available to help as many patients as we can,” he said.
“And we’re going to get there through a combination of funding for all the equipment that we need and also training of doctors to be able to offer everything that could be useful.”
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