EAU policy on live surgery events.

CONTEXT: Live surgery is an important part of surgical education, with an increase in the number of live surgery events (LSEs) at meetings despite controversy about their real educational value, risks to patient safety, and conflicts of interest.

OBJECTIVE: To provide a European Association of Urology (EAU) policy on LSEs to regulate their organisation during urologic meetings.

EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: The project was carried out in phases: a systematic literature review generating key questions, surveys sent to Live Surgery Panel members, and Internet- and panel-based consensus finding using the Delphi process to agree on and formulate a policy.

EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: The EAU will endorse LSEs, provided that the EAU Code of Conduct for live surgery and all organisational requirements are followed. Outcome data must be submitted to an EAU Web-based registry and complications reported using the revised Martin criteria. Regular audits will take place to evaluate compliance as well as the educational role of live surgery.

CONCLUSIONS: This policy represents the consensus view of an expert panel established to advise the EAU. The EAU recognises the educational role of live surgery and endorses live case demonstration at urologic meetings that are conducted within a clearly defined regulatory framework. The overriding principle is that patient safety must take priority over all other considerations in the conduct of live surgery.

PATIENT SUMMARY: Controversy exists regarding the true educational value of live surgical demonstrations on patients at surgical meetings. An EAU committee of experts developed a policy on how best to conduct live surgery at urologic meetings. The key principle is to ensure safety for every patient, including a code of conduct and checklist for live surgery, specific rules for how the surgery is organised and performed, and how each patient's results are reported to the EAU. For detailed information, please visit www.uroweb.org.