Source : Springer Nature
Dr. Patrick Noel was born on May 3, 1962. During his childhood and early adolescence, he grew up in French Guiana discovering the Amazonian Forest and developing his adventurous personality. Dr. Noel graduated from the University of Medicine in Bordeaux and continued his training in surgery in Montpellier in the early 1990s, at the beginning of the laparoscopic approach, under the mentorship of Prof. Domergue. During this period, a life lasting friendship with David Nocca started and was continuously nourished through French and international projects. International Club of Young Laparoscopic Surgeons (ICYLS) was a great opportunity to meet talented surgeons and great human beings such as Mariano Palermo, Rami Lutfi, Camilo Boza, Edu Jacobs, and many others.
After finishing his training in general laparoscopic surgery in the late 1990s, Dr. Noel was involved in humanitarian works in Vietnam along with Dr. Mouret, one of the fathers of laparoscopy who performed the first worldwide laparoscopic cholecystectomy. He stayed several months in Hanoi, Vietnam, with the purpose to train local surgeons for different laparoscopic techniques. This was an important period in Dr. Noel’s life cultivating the most important part of his character: a great human being full of generosity and compassion. The expression of his qualities was enhanced over the next years when he operated more than 1000 patients from French Guiana.
Ironically, despite the constraints of one of the busiest private practices in France (around 2010), he was able to dedicate even more time and resources to research in the clinical bariatric field. Starting at this point, Prof. Michel Gagner played an extremely important role guiding his scientific activity and becoming a mentor at this later stage. Collaborations included numerous papers on finding the appropriate indication for each procedure, especially for the revisional cases (1), on reducing the “invasivity” of laparoscopy with reduced port approach or single devices (2, 3) or on decreasing the rate of complications following sleeve gastrectomy in collaboration with his friend, Dr. Thierry Manos (4). This research has resulted in over 50 articles and 7 book chapters. In fact, his entire list of publications perfectly illustrates his surgical career—the evolution of a young surgeon at the beginning of the laparoscopic era into an international leading figure in bariatric surgery.
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