Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

Question: I saw your article on VR in Tech & Innovation in Healthcare Volume 2, Issue 9 and found it compelling. Could VR allow surgeons to train for incredibly complex and involved surgeries? Do you have any examples of when this has been done already?

Kentucky Subscriber

Answer: By using virtual reality (VR) to train for complicated procedures, surgeons can be ready for almost any complication and can view the patient’s body structures at angles that textbooks can’t provide.

In fact, surgeons in Brazil and England recently operated at the same time in a VR operating room together to separate conjoined 3-year-old twins in Rio de Janeiro.

Surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani, pediatric neurosurgeon of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and Dr. Gabriel Mufarrej, head of pediatric surgery at Instituto Estadual do Cerebro Paulo Niemeyer in Brazil, led the real-world surgeries by way of VR headsets. The twins underwent seven surgeries during the procedure, which took place over more than 27 hours and required nearly 100 medical staff.

The London and Rio teams trained for months testing different techniques with the help of VR projections of the twins, brought to life by computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. What further complicated the procedure is that the twins previously underwent unsuccessful surgeries, so certain parts of their anatomy were complicated by scar tissue.

In the end, the surgery was successful and the children are recovering well.