OR-Live.com delivers reality programming that''s heavy on science and light on human drama.

But that approach appeals to doctors and motivated patients - the ideal targets for marketers of hospitals and medical devices.

The Web site, devoted to surgical videos, is a product of slp3D Healthcast Network. Its first St. Louis-based program airs at 3 p.m. Friday. The pre-recorded debut features two Washington University surgeons, who teamed up earlier this month on the nation''s first two aortic abdominal graft repairs, using a new device made by Cook Group Inc.

The St. Louis video is Cook''s initial foray into open access, online surgical demonstrations. It won''t be the last.

"We see this as the future," said Ray Leonard, a senior product manager for Cook.

The company, the world''s largest privately owned maker of medical devices, paid for the video production. Leonard said its sales force will trumpet the video''s on-demand availability on the Cook and OR-Live Web sites.

"That''s part of the beauty of this technology," he said. "You can sit down at your computer and watch it at your leisure."

Leonard was in the BJC HealthCare studio in the Central West End last Friday as Drs. Luis A. Sanchez and Juan C. Parodi, Washington University vascular surgeons at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, did voice-over narration of the procedures they performed in mid-September.

A repair stent wrapped around a catheter is inserted through a small incision in the groin. An invitation-only Web audience of surgeons followed the progress on an X-ray image. The visual was reinforced with graphics and cartoons.

Although this procedure is bloodless, many of the 200-plus surgeries in the OR-Live portfolio are not for the squeamish.

People come to the Web site to see streaming video of live surgery, and they expect an unblinking view, said Dan Aitchison, regional sales director for slp3D, which is based in Hartford, Conn.

Most crews use a camera mounted on a boom over the surgery table. Producers stand prepared to cut away to a moderator or a graphic during live broadcasts. "If a patient''s safety or security were involved, we would knock the cameras away," Aitchison said.

The hospitals or device makers that pay $40,000 to $50,000 for the programming select patients with a high likelihood of a good and predictable outcome.

"We are not talking about patients who are gravely ill," Aitchison said. "Thankfully, we''ve never had a catastrophe."

The company employs its own producers and hires camera crews with surgical experience, said Alex Fraser, director of marketing for slp3D. "The last thing you want is the camera guy passing out as the surgeon makes the first incision."

OR-Live''s audience varies with its programming. Fraser said highly technical interventions and innovative procedures appeal to doctors, nurses and other medical professionals. Most of the programs provide continuing medical education credits. Hospital-sponsored programs are geared to consumers.

For example, a live Caesarean section performed Friday at a hospital in Hartford attracted women who might be candidates for the procedure.

The device showcased in St. Louis is the first Food and Drug Administration-approved product to repair failing abdominal aortic aneurysm grafts, Leonard said.

In an abdominal aortic aneurysm, the largest blood vessel in the body weakens and bulges. The most common site is behind or below the belly button. A rupture can be fatal.

Washington University''s Parodi invented the closed-abdomen repair in the 1980s in his native Argentina. In the early 1990s, he reported the results of human trials, and late that decade several medical-device companies were selling abdominal stents.

Sanchez said that in about 2 percent to 10 percent of patients, a stent will shift, exposing the aneurysm and putting the patient at heightened risk. Cook''s product, the Zenith Renu AAA Ancillary Graft, deploys small barbs that attach to the artery wall beneath the renal arteries and above the failed graft.

"This can work, and we need it," Parodi said.