Hiroyuki Ozawa: The Form of a Team in Surgery

2022/04/08

Last year, the Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Society of Japan changed its name to the Japan Society of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. I believe that from now on, the registered names of departments nationwide will change from "Otorhinolaryngology" to "Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery." Although it is not well known, the "Otorhinolaryngology" departments found in general hospitals provide surgical and medical care for all diseases from the neck up, excluding the brain and eyes. For this reason, in most cases overseas, they have long been referred to as Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. It has finally become a name that reflects reality and aligns with the global situation. As the name suggests, the clinical fields are diverse, and there are experts in each, but I specialize in head and neck surgery in general, and within that, I have made skull base surgery my life's work.

In recent years, treatment for high-difficulty diseases has been required within increasingly complex medical care, and various clinical departments must collaborate for these high-difficulty diseases. Especially in surgery, there are many opportunities for multiple clinical departments to collaborate on operations. Even in such cases, it is rare to perform surgical procedures together; instead, surgeries are performed that differ spatially or temporally. For example, after an otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgeon resects a head and neck cancer, a plastic surgeon performs functional reconstruction of the resected area. In this way, surgeries with different contents are performed sequentially, and the techniques of each clinical department are utilized to lead the entire surgery to success. In such surgeries, a deep understanding of the entire operation is required between each clinical department, and the depth of communication is the key to the success of the surgery.

The skull base area, which is my specialty, is literally located at the base of the skull and is the boundary between neurosurgery and otorhinolaryngology. In surgical treatment in this area, unlike the situation mentioned above, situations arise where an otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgeon and a neurosurgeon operate on the same location at the same time. To perform surgical procedures in "perfect synchronization" with doctors from other clinical departments who have different backgrounds and surgical techniques, a deeper relationship of mutual trust is required. Our current surgical team has built this over many years. Moving forward, I would like to work on creating a system that allows for continuous team medical care while training the personnel who will be responsible for skull base surgery treatment.