No-Scar Surgery Through the Mouth or Vagina

Anthony Kalloo, a professor of medicine and chief of gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of those who pioneered the approach years ago, sees numerous possibilities if a sterile environment becomes less important: battle-site surgery for injured soldiers, operations at the scene of an accident, surgery at the bedside of patients too sick to be moved. In the lab, his team is also testing whether natural orifice surgery can lead to safer ways to operate on fetuses.

Call him a traditionalist or a curmudgeon, Greene says, but he doubts that NOTES will ever be embraced by the surgical community. On the other hand, he allows, "I may be sitting in the assisted-living facility in five or 10 years, saying, 'I was wrong.' "