President
Ian A. Hodgdon, MD
LSU Health New Orleans
School of Medicinea

Vice-President
Juan Salgado-Morales, MD
Universida Central Del Cari

Secretary-Treasurer
Ceana Nezhat, MD
Nezhat Medical Center

Immediate Past President
Sharona Ross, MD
Florida Hospital Tampa

Chairman / Executive Director / Scientific Chair
Raymond J. Lanzafame, MD, MBA
The Society of Laparoscopic & Robotic Surgeons

Trustees 2025-2026
George Melich, MD
University of British Columbia

Robert B. Lim, MD
Wake Forest University

Trustees 2026-2027
Jessica Opoku-Anane, MD, MS
Columbia University

Megan Kennedy Burns, MD, MA
Center for Advanced Laparoscopic Surgery and Pelvic Pain
Dept of Obstetrics & Gynecology
University of Rochester Medical Center

National Advisory Board Trustee (2026)
Iswanto Sucandy, MD
Advent Health

International Advisory Board Trustee (2026)
Silvio Alen Canton, MBBS
University of Padova

Scientific & Technology Advisor/Ex-Officio:
Richard M. Satava, MD
University of Washington

International Advisory Committee Chair/Ex-Officio:
Maurice K. Chung, RPh, MD
Center for Endometriosis, Pelvic Pain & Urogynecology
WVU Medicine, Wheeling & Reynolds Memorial Hospital

Ex-Officio:
Michael S. Kavic, MD
Northeast Ohio Medical University

Jessica Ybanez-Morano, MD, MPH
Cleveland Clinic Mercy Hospital

Ronald Fieldstone, Esq

The Society of Laparoscopic & Robotic Surgeons (SLS)
is proud to announce our 2023-2024 Board of Trustees:

President
Radha Syed, MD
Richmond OB-GYN Associates

Vice-President
Sharona Ross, MD
Florida Hospital Tampa

Secretary-Treasurer
Ian A. Hodgdon, MD
LSU Health New Orleans
School of Medicine

Immediate Past President
Paul G. Toomey, MD
Florida Surgical Specialists

Chairman / Executive Director / Scientific Chair
Raymond J. Lanzafame, MD, MBA
The Society of Laparoscopic & Robotic Surgeons

Trustees (2023-2024)
Juan L. Salgado-Morales, MD
Universida Central Del Caribe
School of Medicine

Robert B. Lim, MD
Wake Forest University
Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center

Trustees (2024-2025)
Ceana Nezhat, MD
Nezhat Medical Center

Jessica Opoku-Anane, MD
Columbia University

National Advisory Board Trustee (2024)
George Melich, MD
University of British Columbia

Scientific & Technology Advisor/Ex-Officio:
Richard M. Satava, MD
University of Washington

International Advisory Committee Chair/Ex-Officio:
Maurice K. Chung, RPh, MD
Center for Endometriosis, Pelvic Pain & Urogynecology
WVU Medicine, Wheeling & Reynolds Memorial Hospital

Ex-Officio:
Michael S. Kavic, MD
Northeast Ohio Medical University

Ronald Fieldstone, Esq

RAYMOND J. LANZAFAME, MD, MBA, FACS NAMED AS CHAIRMAN OF THE SOCIETY OF LAPAROSCOPIC & ROBOTIC SURGEONS (SLS)

Miami, FL: The Society of Laparoscopic & Robotic Surgeons (SLS) is pleased to announce the appointment of Raymond J. Lanzafame, MD, MBA, FACS to the position of Chairman. Dr. Lanzafame has been a key part of SLS’s success since joining the Society in 1992. He continues to serve as the Society’s Executive Director and Scientific Program Chair.

Dr. Lanzafame is certified by the American Board of Surgery. He received a Bachelor of Science with Honors and Distinction from Cornell University, an MD from George Washington University, and an MBA from the William E. Simon School of the University of Rochester.

He holds 24 organizational memberships including: Society of University Surgeons, SAGES, and Central Surgical Association. He is Executive Editor of Photobiomodulation Photomedicine and Laser Surgery, on Editorial Boards for General Surgery News, Journal of Laparoendoscopic Surgery (JLAST), Journal of the Society of Laparoscopic and Robotic Surgeons (JSLS), Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, and Lasers in Medical Science. He is past president of the Upstate Chapter American College of Surgeons, American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery (ASLMS), and The North American Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy (NAALT). He Chairs the ANSI Z136.3 Safe Use of Lasers in Health Care 2019 Revision Committee, delivered testimony on device regulation, participates national panels on lasers and laser safety, credentialing, laparoscopy, managed care, performs medicolegal and biotech consulting, and is consultant to the General and Plastic Surgery Devices and Medical Devices Advisory Committee panels of FDA-CDRH. His publications include over 250 scientific papers and 4 textbooks. He received numerous awards, has 8 Who’s Who listings, and is Director of CME for ASLMS.

The Society of Laparoscopic and Robotic Surgeons Is a non-profit, multidisciplinary and multispecialty educational organization established in 1990 to improve patient care and promote the highest standards of practice through education, training, and information distribution. SLS provides a forum for the introduction, discussion and dissemination of new and established ideas, techniques, technologies and therapies in laparoscopic, endoscopic, robotic, and minimally invasive surgery. SLS is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Imagine having endometriosis excision surgery and needing no downtime.

That’s the reality for Dr. Mona Orady’s patients. The San Francisco-based OB-GYN specializes in mini-laparoscopy. Instead of using instruments with a circumference of 5 to 12 millimeters, she uses 2 to 3-millimeter tools to excise endo. For many women who undergo traditional laparoscopic excision surgery or robotic excision surgery, recovery can vary from days to weeks to months, depending on the extent of the procedure. “In terms of recovery, it’s a game-changer because it means there’s no restriction to physical activity post-op,” says Orady, 39. “Most people are back to work in a day or two. Most patients have no visible scars. It’s not much bigger than putting a needle through the abdominal wall.” Her technique is so popular she says her patients fly in from around the world to have surgery with her.

Above, Orady (right) operates on a patient with her mini-laparoscopy technique.

She recently treated a Cirque du Soleil performer who needed to get a large ovarian cyst removed a mere ten days before opening night of a show. Her scars looked like tiny freckles. “We did mini-laparoscopic surgery on this acrobat,” Orady says. “With the incisions, only two to three millimeters, [she] didn’t require any downtime; so that’s what we did.”

Working with thinner instruments, however, is no easy feat. “Because my instruments are smaller, the surgery does take a little bit longer, and it requires more skill, but the patient recovers in an hour. You have to be more steady and gentler. It’s like painting with a feather, but to me, it’s completely worth it.”

Orady is used to bucking trends. She was nicknamed “Doogie Howser” by her peers after entering medical school at the tender age of 18. Back then they doubted whether or not a covered Muslim woman would go far in the medical field. Today, she spends much of her time traveling the world to teach other surgeons the techniques and benefits of mini/micro-laparoscopy. She recently taught a three-day course at a military hospital in Honolulu to help female soldiers with endometriosis who needed surgery but couldn’t afford to have six weeks of downtime for recovery.

“Women are suffering,” says Orady. “Twenty percent of women have a menstrual disorder. All women are going to have a problem with their period during their lifetime at some point, and it’s usually more than one problem. Yet, nobody focuses on that.” Orady believes that early diagnosis and early treatment of endometriosis is key. Her youngest patient for minimally invasive surgery was just 16.

“For younger patients who don’t even know if they have endometriosis, you put a two or three-millimeter camera in their belly button, and you can know the answer right away and treat it right then and try to get rid of it right at the beginning before anything becomes really bad later on. When people are younger, in their twenties, they typically just have the endo, and then in their thirties, the adenomyosis comes on, and fibroids start showing up after that. By the time someone is in their mid-thirties, usually, they have the triple whammy, which is all three. You have to treat each of these individually.”

Modern medicine aside, Orady finds simply listening to her patients allows for a more accurate diagnosis. “I have been a patient and know the feeling of not being listened to. The tragedy is just women thinking ‘Oh well this is my life’ and thinking suffering on your period is normal or that it’s just part of being a woman. It’s not right. And it’s definitely not normal.”

Source: Endometriosis Foundation of America

In the last decade, minimally invasive surgery has made major strides, with “incision-less” and micro- surgery looming on the near horizon. While the adoption of these advanced techniques has dramatically improved patient healing rates and recovery times, the standard opioid-centric approach to post-surgical pain management continues to diminish the patient’s overall post-op experience. Isn’t it time for our pain management toolkit to catch up with our rapidly evolving surgical techniques?

In the past year, Florida Hospital started shifting towards a multimodal opioid-sparing approach to pain management, anchored by local infiltration with liposomal bupivacaine (EXPAREL®). Anecdotally, we saw immediate and clear benefits of integrating direct infiltration of this medication into the surgical site as part of our routine protocols.  To encourage better patient care we ran an independent, non-funded single-institution study to quantify the impact of this agent on postoperative opioid use and adverse events.  During an eight-month period, we (surgeons and nurses) collected data on 82 open hernia repair and lap colon resection patients, all of whom received the “standard of care” (IV hydromorphone or morphine with or without epidurals, and/or IV acetaminophen), while 45 also received liposomal bupivacaine infiltration.  The data, which found significantly lower rates of urinary retention, respiratory depression and fall risk in the liposomal bupivacaine group, helped drive adoption of long-acting local analgesia across multiple surgeons and surgical specialties within our institution.

With increasing pressure from federal mandates tying reimbursement to patient satisfaction and the rate of sentinel events such as falls and urinary tract infections, hospitals will increasingly look to surgeons and anesthesiologists to identify new ways to enhance patient care by reducing avoidable complications after surgery. Based on my experience, liposomal bupivacaine will be a central fixture in the next generation pain management paradigm, where laparoendoscopic and other minimally invasive procedures transition from the exception to the norm.