Nomenclature of abbreviated acronyms (Naa…)—caveamus surgeones

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Surgical endoscopy promotes appraisal of new ideas, questions old dogmas, nurtures critical thinking, facilitates continuing medical education, and provides a vent for the creativity inherent to the art of surgery and its practitioner. Endoscopic surgery (ES) gave a new lease of life to the dying species of general surgeons. The advent of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) was not only acute but infectious for society and contagious for our fraternity. The change was not universally welcomed by all, leaving a lot of work to be done by pioneers. Communication is a facilitator of change, and surgical endoscopy became an instrument of change by communicating the academic and clinical aspects of MIS. Surgeons not enamored by MIS were left with mostly residual surgery (MRS). The evolution of endoscopic surgery has been associated with the challenge of communication from the very beginning. Whether it should be baptized as minimally invasive surgery or minimal access surgery (MAS) was not as trivial as “a rose by any other name…” [1]. The issue was ably elucidated by Sir A. Cuschieri, who drove home the simple surgical wisdom that it was only the invasiveness of access that was minimised and not the holistic invasion of the human body [1]. He thus settled the issue in defining MAS and emphasized that an acronym has to be not only accurate but also nonrestrictive to be acceptable [1]. …