Interventional Digestive Endoscopy: How to Overcome Problems Encountered when Implementing New Techniques in Community Hospitals

Call for Papers

Most doctors are trained on gastrointestinal endoscopy in tertiary referral centers. Afterwards, many of them work in community hospitals. This term varies from one country or region to another. But, in general, these hospitals are not referral centers and do not have the entire range of diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities.

On the other hand, therapeutic digestive endoscopy has spread beyond these large hospitals to smaller centers. A lot of interventional procedures are performed in such Community hospitals as gastrointestinal haemorrhage treatment, stricture dilation, stenting, and even ERCP.

The majority of published articles come from large and tertiary care hospitals, therefore, the exact extend in the community is not well known. Besides, it is very important to share this information between doctors working in these kinds of centers. We are interested in articles that explore aspects of interventional digestive endoscopy performed in this type of hospitals. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Feasibility of a therapeutic technique
• Type of sedation used
• Techniques performed on emergency basis (out of usual working hours)
• Training of auxiliary staff (nurses, endoscopic assistants, etc.)
• Cost savings in avoiding referral
• Outcomes including complications and comparison with the same techniques performed in larger centers
• Facilities to perform therapeutic endoscopic including fluoroscopic devices
• Technique development: arrival of trained doctors, need for the technique in the community, difficulties in referral, and so forth

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/dte/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Jesús García-Cano, Department of Digestive Diseases, Hospital Virgen de la Luz, 16002 Cuenca, Spain

Guest Editors

• Iñaki Fernández-Urién, Servicio de Aparato Digestivo, Hospital de Navarra, 31008 Pamplona, Spain
• Cristiano Spada, Digestive Endoscopy Unit, Catholic University, Largo A. Gemelli, 00168 Rome, Italy
• Rami Eliakim, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel-hashomer, Israel