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Jason Merrill
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December 7, 2009, ST. LOUIS - As international leader in complex urological surgery, Sam Bhayani, MD, is known for removing only the cancer on a kidney instead of the entire kidney using robotic technology. In November, Dr. Bhayani was the first to interactively broadcast his surgery nationally, to allow physicians in other parts of the country to learn the surgical techniques.

Dr. Bhayani, a urologist at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, has been performing robotic, noninvasive surgeries for seven years, and has been teaching others along the way. Technology is now helping him educate other physicians through real-time questions with interactive software.

“Other teams can ask ‘why are you cutting there’ or ‘should you cut here instead’ while drawing a line on the screen that I can see,” says Dr. Bhayani, “we can tele-strate just like one sees on television”

Dr. Bhayani says this type of education goes well beyond twittering during surgery.

“Twittering is just a voice or text,” he says. “With this new technology, we are able to bring the whole OR to life in front of other teams.” 

Surgical teams from California and the East coast learned the surgeries as if they were sitting in the OR right at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

“This technology will be great to train other surgeons around the world, while showing the best practices we have developed at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University,” says Dr. Bhayani. “It is exciting and represents the next phase of long-distance surgical education.”