Surgery will change – with all the challenges that developments such as Big Data create there are no two ways about it. However, how deep those changes run remains to be seen. In a rather young field of research, scientists look at the ways all components used during surgery can be interlinked. Professor Beat Müller, co-initiator of the project ‘Cognition-Guided Surgery’, explains results…
Big Data, automation, and artificial intelligence – no doubt, all these developments will have an impact on surgery. During our interview, Professor Hubertus Feußner, Head of the interdisciplinary research group ‘Minimally invasive interdisciplinary therapy intervention’ at the Technical University Munich, Germany, and Professor Christoph Thümmler, Professor for eHealth at Edinburgh…
Technological advances increasingly enable endoscopists to treat disease and perform surgical procedures. However, professionals must work hard to learn and maintain knowledge of complex interventions, says Dr Ferran González-Huix Lladó, President of the Spanish society of digestive endoscopy (SEED)
3-D printed tumour-like constructs will be used by a research team at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, to raise research to a new level and successfully lead to new treatment options.
Jose Ramon Armengol-Miro has directed the World Institute for Digestive Endoscopy Research (WIDER) since 2007. There, he leads the investigation of Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES). The technique was introduced to gastrointestinal endoscopy over ten years ago. Speaking with European Hospital the expert assessed its use and value today.
21st century technology has outpaced our expectations. One such example is the invention of advanced digital manufacturing techniques, better known as 3-D printing. Patients and the medical community are yet to see the full implementation of this technology within healthcare.
NDS has announced it is prepared to launch in Europe its highly anticipated ZeroWire® Mobile battery-powered display stand solution at the MEDICA World Forum for Medicine in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Brain cancer treatment is taking a major step ahead as Spanish surgeons pioneer a new technique that spares language and motion functions. This splendid development might even one day result in epilepsy surgery.
Mechanical ventilation and subspecialisation are key aspects of modern anaesthesia and critical care practice according to Dr Javier Garcia Fernandez, Head of Critical Care and Anaesthesiology at University Hospital Puerta de Hierro in Madrid.
Complex bone fractures are often set with titanium or steel screws and plates. However, if these remain in the body for some time, they can cause health problems. A new bioceramic screw nail has the capacity of replacing the currently used metal components. It can be easily introduced into bone and does not have to be removed.
NDS will showcase its new 4K Ultra-High-Definition (UHD) visualization technology with the launch of the Radiance® Ultra 4K 32” monitor during the MEDICA World Forum for Medicine.
For the first time, fetal medicine experts have performed prenatal heart surgery to remove a life-threatening tumor, called intrapericardial teratoma. The patient, who underwent the operation at 24 weeks of gestation while in his mother’s womb, is now a healthy three-year-old preschooler. “We have shown that we can accurately diagnose and provide a prognosis for this rare condition in utero,…
A Northwestern University research team has developed a 3D printable ink that produces a synthetic bone implant that rapidly induces bone regeneration and growth. This hyperelastic “bone” material, whose shape can be easily customized, one day could be especially useful for the treatment of bone defects in children.
Using the results from a computerized mathematical model, Johns Hopkins researchers investigated whether they could improve heart and lung transplantation procedures by transferring patients from low-volume to high-volume transplant centers.
‘Amputation v. reconstruction’ – a vital issue – was debated by two leading surgeons during the Microsurgical Lower Limb Reconstruction session at the Advances and Controversies in Reconstructive Microsurgery (ACRM) 2016 conference, held in the United Kingdom this May. Consultant Plastic Surgeon Umraz Khan, from North Bristol NHS Trust presented a plastic surgeon’s view, while Ben…
A study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine offers the most in-depth assessment yet of the safety and effectiveness of a high-tech alternative to brain surgery to treat the uncontrollable shaking caused by the most common movement disorder. And the news is very good.
A small report in the press prompted examination of a much neglected topic. The report read ‘Heart Centre at University Hospital no longer carries out transplants’, and referred to the University Hospital Frankfurt, one of the 22 Heart Centres that perform these transplantations.
Coronary interventions often rely more on art than science as the decision to treat a patient tends to be based on what clinicians can see, a subjective interpretation of cardiac imaging. Two new techniques have emerged for cardiovascular diagnostics that are enabling software to help surgeons and cardiologists measure, and thereby better manage cardiac disease.
The Medtronic CoreValve Evolut R System received its CE Mark of approval this August to treat aortic stenosis in patients with an intermediate risk for undergoing conventional surgery for a valve replacement. This is a controversial indication for transcatheter aortic valve implantations (TAVI) – one that has been eagerly sought by some clinicians but resisted by others. Younger patients will…
Given mounting financial pressure, a hospital needs greater efficiency in medical service structures. Staff and materials for operating theatres (OTs) account for about a third of the overall expenditure. Working closely with all other hospital departments, OT efficiency can affect a hospital’s overall efficiency and costs.
Defined processes and competencies are essential in the operating room along with the allocation of staff. Yet the OR-Barometer 2015 that is published every other year by the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, reveals that only 47 percent of the surveyed nursing staff in the fields of surgery and anesthesiology are satisfied with the level of organization in operating rooms. In this…
Dr Jean Nehme, a London-based trainee plastic surgeon, reflects on his own training – a decade spent attending lectures, revising textbooks, passing examinations − but did he actually practise a surgical operation?
Joshua Bederson, MD, Professor and System Chair for the Department of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Health System, is the first neurosurgeon to use CaptiView – a microscope image injection system from Leica Microsystems that overlays critical virtual reality imaging directly onto the brain when viewed through the eyepiece, known as the ocular, during surgery.
Rectal cancer surgery - using a Da Vinci robot and conducted by Tas Qureshi, Consultant Surgeon and robotic lead at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - was beamed live from his operating theatre by satellite to an international conference of specialist doctors, student doctors and to a worldwide audience via multimedia platforms with live audio and twitter feedback.
600,000 robot-assisted surgical interventions were performed in 2015 worldwide, most of them urological procedures, particularly radical prostatectomies.