OMED E-Newsletter Issue 2, 2009: OMED Center of Excellence

This month OMED highlights the Santiago Training Center at the Clinica Alemana in Santiago, Chile. The Santiago Training Center for advanced endoscopic techniques was founded in Santiago, Chile in 1997 and endorsed by WGO / OMED on July 23, 2004. The mission of the training center is to increase the advanced endoscopy skills of endoscopists from different countries, especially from the Latin-American area; to teach the necessary techniques to become experts in endoscopic sedation ; to encourage trainees to increase their academic knowledge.

The faculty is comprised of 10 medical and surgical endoscopists and 4 anesthesiologists. The endoscopy section is chaired by Dr Claudio Navarrete and Dr Roque Sáenz. The anesthesiology section is chaired by Dr Carlos Reyes.

Areas of training include: Advanced Therapeutic Endoscopy, Endoscopy Sedation, and Endoscopic Ultrasound. Other training opportunities include courses on Advanced Endoscopic Training (4 months) and an anesthesiologist’s training program (30 days).

Additional academic activities consist of five Biennal International Courses on Therapeutic Endoscopy to date (next course March 2010); selective training or upgrades (CME) for trained therapeutic endoscopists; six thematic courses, such as models in endoscopy; Sedation in GI Endoscopy" (an OMED Course); How to use the Library Meta Searcher System (CIM).

The Santiago center also provides a philanthropic contribution to the region by performing 2500 therapeutic endoscopic procedures free-of-charge to patients from 52 hospitals and institutions on an annual basis. This represents an enormous economic contribution towards the annual budget of the National Ministry of Health. These patients are, in turn, available for hands-on teaching procedures including dilatation, stenting, APC, mucosectomy, EMR, ESD, magnification, chromoendoscopy, NBI, ERCP and stone retrieval, PEG, removal of large colonic polyps etc. An "open door" outreach policy provides consultancy services to assist in the treatment of difficult cases referred from gastroenterologists in the region.