The impact of technologies on minimally invasive therapy

This issue of Surgical Endoscopy contains a new Technology Section set up by the two Editors in Chief with Dr. A. Melzer as the Technical Editor in charge of this Section. The primary objective is to review existing and emerging technology relating the whole spectrum of minimally invasive therapy or minimal access therapy. However, the preparation of the first Technology Section raised various issues relating to definitions, skills versus technology, co-operation between research clinicians and scientists/technologists and the anticipated future multidisciplinary therapeutic approach by disease-related treatment groups forming a coherent team of specialists from various disciplines working in close co-operation rather than as separate disciplines, with obvious gain in terms of the appropriate intervention in the individual case and improved patient outcome. The emergence of tomographic endosurgery covered in this issue exemplifies this approach which we must adopt as we approach the next millennium.