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Hyper Smash

Saturday, September 13, 2014

LLIF-Lateral Lumbar Interbody Fusion Procedure

This particular video taken during the Lateral Lumbar Interbody Fusion procedure at UPMC by Dr.Kanter and his team is a treat to watch the intricacy of surgical steps during lateral Spine procedure, you might have been into the OR or  probably done neuromonitoring for procedures including various lumbar level fusion procedures, but if there is no live camera equipped in the OR,  it is often difficult to know where exactly is the surgeon is and what is he/she is doing at a particular stage of the procedure, it will be just a guess work and that is not acceptable in the medical/health care field (all the stakeholders inside the OR must know exactly about the procedure) and that is not how things can go inside the Operating Room. Every team member from Anesthesiologist to Neurophysiologist to nurses must know every step of the way what exactly the surgeon is doing in order to help or figure out if there is any issue arise during surgical procedure. Unfortunately, most ORs are not equipped with the video transmission inside the OR or if there is one they normally do not use it (but in most neurosurgery ORs they do use). Those professionals who work inside the OR must acquaint themselves with surgical  steps of the surgeons, one way to do is watch it live or recorded one, or a demo before participating in such surgical procedure. It will provide a deeper understanding and realistic perception of how a particular procedure is done, with that knowledge handy, it will be more appropriate to provide feed back to the surgeon on neurophysiology or anesthesia or other relevant modalities to be monitored inside the OR. Even the X-Ray tech's must know the basics (most often that is not the case), ironically the cell saver and other tech's who come inside the OR have no clue about anything in the OR except that little machine collecting the blood?. Knowing exactly what the surgeon is doing every step of the way inside the OR provides a lot more close to a  realistic perception than reading it from a book or listening someone describe it. For those graduates or tech's who have not seen the details of this procedure, this is a good one to watch. Thanks to Dr.Kanter and his colleagues from UPMC for presenting this procedure so well.