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Revolution of digitally assisted surgery coming soon
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COPENHAGEN — Technology and informatics are going to change the future of the operating room, leading to precise, efficient digitally assisted surgery. The revolution is already underway, Pravin U. Dugel, MD, said at the Euretina meeting here.
“It is all about closing the loop between what we see in the office, where we have OCT, photographs, angiograms, ultrasound and multispectral imaging, and what we see in the OR, where at the moment we go blind to surgery,” he said.
Pravin U. Dugel
The future will entail planning surgery outside the OR and then going to the OR to execute that plan, “like a pilot does when flying from one city to another.”
Multimodal registration and surgical navigation will become the new standard approach, leading to enhanced precision and efficiency.
“Personally I haven’t used the surgical microscope for 2 years. All my surgery is done heads up with 3-D glasses,” he said.
Three-dimensional OCT will further enhance treatment planning, with no more vision from above and being surprised by what is there. Surgeons will be able to see exactly and three dimensionally what is there and where to place forceps and scissors, leaving little chance for complications, Dugel said.
“Pilots nowadays don’t look out of the windows of the aircraft; they look at panels, have GPS and guidance, combined with information on airline traffic. This is exactly the way we are going to do surgery in the OR,” he said. – by Michela Cimberle
Reference:
Dugel PU. Digitally assisted vitreoretinal surgery (DAVS). Presented at 16th Euretina Congress; Sept 8-11, 2016; Copenhagen, Denmark.
Disclosure: Dugel reports he is a consultant to Alcon, Novartis, Annidis, OD-OS and TrueVision.