A new operating room at Barnes-Jewish Hospital offers a wealth of resources to the physicians who use it, their patients and physicians located around the world.
The first of its kind in St. Louis, the room is equipped with centralized control surgical equipment, including surgical devices, video monitors and other systems, historic patient archives, endoscopic video, video on demand and two-way Web-based communication. Typically, the room serves patients requiring minimally invasive and weight-loss (bariatric) surgery.
“With this new integrated technology and enhanced visual definition, we may provide improved surgical outcomes,” says Esteban Varela, MD, Washington University bariatric surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Surgeons using this operating room can not only record procedures from multiple camera angles for training purposes, but they also can stream live surgeries in real time to physicians anywhere via the Internet.
“This technology allows us to obtain pictures not only from the room but through the endoscope,” says Varela. “Advances like these allow us to develop our clinical and teaching missions both locally and abroad.” For example, Varela and his colleagues will use the technology to stream an upcoming graduate medical course about hernia repair to surgeons in South America and China.
One operating room at the hospital has this unique technology installed, but more are a possibility in the future, according to Colleen Becker, RN, executive director of perioperative services at Barnes- Jewish. “This technology fully supports our commitment to delivering the highest levels of patient care,” says Becker.