Encouraging student-driven clinical research in Germany: the CHIR-Net SIGMA network

Evidence should define and guide modern clinical care, yet many relevant questions in surgical practice remain unconfirmed by substantial data. Evidence-based medicine requires both the implementation of its principles in day-to-day work and the acquisition of new evidence preferably by randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews. Meaningful clinical research, however, is challenging to conduct, and its overall infrastructure in Germany was, until recently, considered poor compared to other leading countries. Although this has been significantly improved after the establishment of the Study Center of the German Surgical Society (SDGC) and the surgical clinical trial network CHIR-Net, limited focus has been put on the training, teaching, and recruitment of medical students to become competent clinical researchers and clinician scientists. To ensure continuing comprehensive clinical research in surgery, CHIR-Net aims to establish a student-driven multicenter research network in Germany, which is embedded in both the national CHIR-Net and the pan-European and international frameworks. Student-Initiated German Medical Audits (SIGMA) is a product of the strong collaboration between clinical scientists and medical trainees, enabling students to contribute to high-quality clinical trials. Additionally, participants are offered extensive training to support the next generation of research-active clinicians. Starting on 2018, SIGMA will perform its first multicenter observational study in Germany.

Prevention and therapy of postoperative tetany. Bauer (50th meeting of the German Surgical Society)

At the 50th meeting of the German Surgical Society Bauer stated that the cause of postoperative tetany can be not only damage of epithelial bodies but also other things. To prove it he cited cases of tetany after operations on organs remote from the neck and having no connection with the thyroid gland, for example, after operations on hemorrhoids, gonitis, etc., on the one hand, and four own cases of preoperative tetany, on the other hand.