"After 60 years of surgery and over 40 years of teaching surgery, I have never been more excited than at CEMAST,” Dr Tehemton Udwadia, chairman of the Center informed Parsiana. The spanking new premises of the Center of Excellence for Minimal Access Surgery (CEMAST) at Worli, Bombay, were inaugurated by Dr Sybill Storz, chairperson of Karl Storz GmbH and Company KG of Tuttlingen, Germany, on November 25, 2016. Udwadia states that the Center "trains surgeons from all over India with special thrust to small towns and rural surgeons, in several MAS (minimal access surgery) specialties, to ensure the benefits of this surgical advance reaches all people in all places irrespective of their socioeconomic status.” It is a facility "run by surgeons for surgeons…. The purpose of CEMAST is to train surgeons to make MAS safe for the patient,” Udwadia explains.
Dr Tehemton Udwadia (left); CEMAST laboratory
Funded by a generous educational grant from Karl Storz GmbH and Company KG four years ago, CEMAST was started in Bombay in 2012. Since then over 4,000 surgeons and about 1,000 nurses working in operation theaters have been trained in laparoscopic techniques. "This education is being imparted by a national faculty drawn from all over India not only for their expertise but also for their passion for teaching… Students spend about 80% of the time working hands-on on virtual reality simulators for each specialty, and more important on tissue models ingeniously created to mimic true to life operation scenarios,” Udwadia shares.
The facility, which has four laboratories and 22 workstations, is "one of its kind,” being autonomous and purely academic. CEMAST has "gained international recognition, accreditation and reputation as one of the finest minimal access surgery training facilities in the world. CEMAST imparts training in 10 surgical specialties, the only training center in the world to do so,” the brochure states.
Udwadia adds, "In keeping with the not for profit status… the cost of courses vary from Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000,” as against Rs 80,000 to Rs 2,00,000 for similar courses in other countries.