From the April 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


“It started with the vascular surgeons and is expanding,” says Miranda Rasenberg, global interventional marketing manager at GE Healthcare. “Like a pebble in the water, it’s creating this rippling effect that other clinical segments within surgery are starting to show interest in high-end imaging systems.”

In Europe, hospitals are removing kidney stones and evaluating kidney transplants in the hybrid OR. “One never thought that for simple kidney stones you would use these kinds of rooms for advanced imaging,” says Kulkarni. “We never thought that would happen, but it’s happening.”


Many hospitals want to perform these novel procedures in their hybrid ORs, but are unsure about how to make that happen. To help with that, Siemens recently introduced its Siemens Signature Service for Hybrid OR, which provides workflow consulting and training.

Each hospital that is part of the program is assigned a unique telephone number and a concierge representative who is either a hybrid OR clinical applications specialist or certified service engineer to provide the support.

The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey, decided to use the service program because the surgeons and staff were struggling to keep up with the complex procedures that were entering the hybrid OR. The surgeons would go to conferences and learn about new procedures, but when it came to translating that knowledge in their hospital it became a challenge.

“As technicians, we can troubleshoot based on the knowledge we have, but we really needed additional information from Siemens,” says Erin Stolfe, interventional tech supervisor at The Valley Hospital. “We knew the machines had the capability, but with the knowledge base that we had, we couldn’t progress at the same rate that the technology in exams was progressing.”

In February, two workflow consultants went to the hospital because the service lines in the hybrid OR have grown so much that the room is almost at full capacity. The workflow group came in to help the hospital analyze their workflow and train the staff onsite. “They are able to provide training here and I [was able to] get everyone on the same playing field,” says Stolfe.

Should you get an advanced operating table?
In early February, surgeons at the Texas Institute for Robotic Surgery successfully completed the first robotic surgery that combined the da Vinci Xi surgical system and Trumpf Medical’s TruSystem 7000dV operating table.

The surgeons took full advantage of the range of table adjustments while performing the total proctocolectomy.

April 2016 Magazine

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