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In-house physician Jon LaPook got on his public health soapbox for CBS' Eye on Your Health. He visited gynecologist Lori Warren at Louisville's Baptist Hospital East to dramatize the difference between minimally invasive and traditional hysterectomies. His campaign, in collaboration with Business Week magazine, is to persuade women about to undergo uterus surgery for pain and bleeding from fibroids to ask their doctors to use a laparoscope. LaPook's statistics are that only 15% of the 600,000 hysterectomies performed annually nationwide use the low-pain procedure like Dr Warren does. LaPook is convinced that patient pressure is the key to ending surgeons' inertia: some 15 years ago when a laparoscope was invented for gall bladder surgery "it did not catch on right away." Now 90% of gall bladder surgeries use it. Besides reducing pain, LaPook argued that laparoscopes save money because post surgical hospital stays are shorter. He offered no statistics to back that up, however.
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