- Director, Possover International Medical Center, Zurich, Switzerland
Professor Dr Med Marc Possover MD PhD is known worldwide as the pioneer in the field of laparoscopic surgery of the pelvic nerves having performed many first, including the first laparoscopic implantation of electrodes to pelvic nerves for recovery standing and walking but also bladder /intestinal and sexual functions in paralysed patients, the first implantation of electrodes to the pelvic nerves for control differents neural pelvic pain including pain of the lower extremities (phantom pain after legg amputation, polyneuropathy…) and the first implantation of electrodes to the pelvic nerves to control bladder function in patients with multiple sclerosis and in childrens with spina bifida.
Professor Possover is an internationally recognised expert in advanced laparoscopic vaginal surgery for genital cancers and for advanced mutivisceral endometrisosis and is recognised as the leading expert worldwide in laparoscopic management of pelvic nerves damages secondary to surgery or to endometriosis. For preservation of integrity of bladder/intestinal and sexual functions after radical pelvic surgery, he was also the first in the world to introduce the technique of laparoscopic electrostimulation of the pelvic nerves – LANN technique – for their intraoperative identification and preservations of the nerves.
Professor Possover trained at the University of Nancy, France. He studied general medecine then cardio-vascular surgery and gained full knowledge, training and duties in the aera of the visceral and urologic surgery. Up 1991, he completed residency in Ob/gynin Germany and developped special interest and expertise in the field of advanced laparoscopic surgery involving laparoscopic lymphadenectomy and anterior rectal resection for resention also for endometriosis.
In 1995 he completed a course with Professor Daniel Dargent at the University of Lyons, where he learned the techniques of the radical vaginal hysterectomy by Schauta and the radical vaginal trachelectomy by Dargent for treatment cervical cancer. He brought these surgical techniques to Germany and further developed these methods at the University of Jena. There he developed the laparoscopic assisted radical vaginal hysterectomy type III and wrote his postdoctoral thesis on this operative method which makes an extended resection of the cervical bands as a conventional method in the therapy of cervical cancer possible. Parallel to this he developed the laparoscopic vaginal radical excision of severe endometriosis of the septum rectovaginal with bowel affectation and stenosis. To date he has performed over 1300 laparoscopic lymphonodectomies, over 600 radical vaginal hysterectomies including trachelectomy, and 180 laparoscopic bowel resections for severe endometriosis.
As this method demands a high radicality which results in a high morbidity in relation to bladder and bowel voiding dysfunction he concentrated on the motoric innervation of the various organs in the pelvis. Based on the technique of laparoscopic exposure of the motoric pelvic nerves of the bladder and of the rectum, he was the first to develop the principle of the parasympathetic nerve-sparing radical surgery of the pelvis, a method which can be used not only in the therapy of cervical cancer and the surgery of deep infiltrating endometriosis but can also be used in further areas such as visceral surgery and urology in order to significantly reduce the postoperative bladder, bowel and sexual dysfunction without reducing the radicality of the surgery. Through this gained knowledge of the neuroanatomy of the pelvis he began the dissection of nerves in the pelvis for other indications such as sciatalgy, pudendal neuralgia or the Alcock´s canal syndrome and was the first to have the idea of implanting electrodes on pelvic nerves – LION procedure – to control neural pain of the pelvis or of the lower extremities such the polyneuropathy or the phantom stump pain after lower extremity amputation.
In 2003 he was the first wolrdwide to implant also an electrode on somatic nerves in a paraplegic patient for recovery the functions of the leggs (Brindisi) and 2006 he performed also the first worldwide implantation of electrode to pelvic nerves for recovery bladder and rectal functions in a paralyzed women.
All this new techniques pushed him to reassemble all this new technsique and therapies in one speciality: neuropelveology.
In July 2017, Prof. Marc Possover founded his own international medical center in Zürich, Switzerland, specialising in neuropelveology, operative gynaecology and oncological gynaecology.
He is on the editorial boards of: Journal of Pelvic Surgery, References en Gynecologie Obstetrique, Journal of Gynecology Oncology, European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Journal Gynecological Surgery – Endoscopy, Imaging, and Allied Techniques, Journal of Minimal Invasive Gynecology.