John M. Sayles, MD, discusses his area of focus, approach to patient care, and surgery options for colorectal cancer.
Hi, I'm John Sayles. I'm a colorectal surgeon that works here. It's entirely hospital. Well, all all areas of colorectal surgery, Specifically malignancies calling a rectal cancers, but everything else from inflammatory bowel disease and, uh, and diverticulitis to include things with anal disease as well. I think I began to really look at medicine when I was in middle school or so and my grandfather, who was a physician at the Mayo Clinic. I got to go and visit him and see what he did in the mail clinic, and that really was what sort of got me going. I then went on to medical school and also went into the Army to pay for medical school. So I had a good experience with the Army, went to residency with the Army at Walter Reed Army Hospital. And so that's basically been where what started things. Well, I came to the area initially just because it was a great area on by. My wife knew a little bit about it, and so we moved to this area because it's such a nice area. And then, as I was here for a while, I realized that Sentara really is one of the best areas Thio best companies to work at and the best facilities. And that was I quickly realized that, and I'm very happy that I'm here now. I think the most important thing is really just to allow them to have all the information they need to make the best choices. It's not to dictate what they should have, but it's really to completely evaluate them and give them the options. Um, and that maybe many different options to include surgery and non surgery. But it really is mostly to make sure that they understand it at their level and are able to make a good decision. From a surgical standpoint, things such as minimally invasive surgery continue to get better. The robotic platform is something that really allows us to do very delicate surgery down in the pelvis and to be able to help to preserve sphincter function and not have to have permanent colostomy, he's. There's also a transitional platform where we can work through the anise and using small instrument similar to laparoscopic instruments. Those could be used to remove polyps that otherwise would require a large surgery. I think those are the biggest improvements and where things are gonna really improve for rectal cancer,
