What is the Journal of the SLS (JSLS)

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Dr. Larry Demco: "I have with me the Editor and Chief of the Journal of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, Dr. Michael Kavic. I'd like to ask Michael to tell us a little bit about his journal, some of the history behind the journal, and for whom this journal is published."

Dr. Michael Kavic: "Certainly, Larry. It's a pleasure to talk with you and your organization. The JSLS is the Journal of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, and it was founded to promote the scientific interests of our society and to provide an outlet for creativity. Our society, as you are aware, is a multi-disciplinary organization, one of the very few multi-disciplinary surgical societies in the world today, and the journal represents the activities of the society. We first thought of the journal about four years ago - it took a year in planning, and we initiated it three years ago. I'm very proud of the fact that the journal has attracted a very high quantity of papers of good scientific content. They're actually of such great merit that when we applied for indexing in Index Medicus, we were accepted our very first time, we had only been in existence a year and a half. Even more impressive was the fact that the journal was accepted, and accepted retroactively - that is to say, all the articles published in the journal from day one have been and are now indexed in Index Medicus and MEDLINE. It's really quite a feat."

Dr. Larry Demco: "Does the journal have any connections with the Internet at this time?"

Dr. Michael Kavic: "Yes we do. Through the website of the society - SLS.org - you can use a hot link to get to the journal which gives abstracts of all the articles, authors, and biographical material. So that's available instantly on the Internet."

Dr. Larry Demco: "Are there plans in the future to have access to the actual original articles through the Internet?"

Dr. Michael Kavic: "Yes, there are. We plan, as soon as our website capabilities permit, to put the entire journal on the web for perusal by any interested parties."

Dr. Larry Demco: "Why is it important for a journal to be established where we have a mixture of articles from gynecologists, general surgeons, and urologists, all reading the same material?"

Dr. Michael Kavic: "I'm glad you brought that up, Larry. What we've found with our society, and in particular with gynecologists and general surgeons, is that there are important advances in one area that would benefit all surgeons, and here to for, we just didn't have the time or perhaps the inclination to read one another's specialty work. To give you an example, some outstanding gynecological surgeons have done brilliant work with laparoscopic pain mapping. What they've shown is that people with pain, in particular in this instance women with pain, the product or the cause of the pain is usually something different than what you might think using intuitive reasoning. We're beginning to understand now that pain is much more complex than we'd noted here to for, and there are different ways to tackle and to handle this. Gynecologists have taught us general surgeons the importance of it. Just one of many, many examples of the benefit of a cross fertilization of ideas and techniques..."

Dr. Larry Demco: "Thank you, Dr. Kavic. We'll be looking forward to reading the journals and looking forward to you editing some of the leading articles. Thank you very much."

Dr. Michael Kavic: "Thank you, Dr. Demco. It's a pleasure being with you."