by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | April 06, 2016
From the April 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“As we have been using robotics over the past few years, one of the areas that we always thought was lacking was the fact that the robot was fixed to the operating room,” says Dr. Thiru Lakshman, colorectal surgeon at the institute. “When the patient is on the table and the robot is docked with the instrumentation, the table cannot move at all.”
Colorectal surgeons are usually working in multiple quadrants and sometimes require that the patient be repositioned. Traditionally, they would have to completely undock and then reposition the robot, but with the advanced operating table they no longer have to do that.
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During surgery, the da Vinci Xi surgical system and the TruSystem 7000dV table move in a synchronized fashion. The table’s positioning is transmitted to the robotic system and the instrument arms, boom and endoscope are oriented to the patient’s anatomy.
For hospitals that are considering pairing their surgical robotic system with an advanced operating table, Lakshman recommends that they first make sure that the table and robot are going to be utilized appropriately and for the right types of cases that require repositioning the patient.
The hospitals should also make sure that they have a good volume of patients who undergo those types of cases, so that it’s worth the investment and the time to train the staff on how to use it.
“As a surgeon it is a win-win because the thing with robotics is that as we start doing it more and it becomes more widespread, that really sort of opens it up a little bit more to try different types of cases robotically that you may not have considered doing that way before,” says Lakshman.
New to the market
At last year’s Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) conference, GE released six software packages for its Discovery 7 Series fluoroscopy system — three of which are used in the hybrid OR. The packages help physicians to plan, guide and assess clinically difficult procedures.
Its Vessel ASSIST package helps physicians navigate and guide through vessels. The physicians are looking for ways to see into vessels that they wouldn’t usually be able to see into.
Physicians traditionally perform open bypass surgery if there is a chronic occlusion of the vessel in the lower limbs, but the Vessel ASSIST package allows them to perform that procedure minimally invasively. It provides them with an outline of the vessels, then defines the centerline of the vessels and uses that to fuse onto the live fluoroscopy.
