Operating room technology
Cyber surgery
The smallest mistake in a surgical procedure can leave patients with injuries that lessen their quality of life, or even result in death on the operating table. But without rigorous training, how can young surgeons expect to improve their technique? Up until now, hospitals have dealt with this quandary by giving trainees cadavers or animals to work on, or else limiting them to straightforward medical procedures. But now, virtual reality is opening new avenues for surgeons to gain the experience they need to take on complex operations – without adding a layer of risk to a living, breathing patient. Andrea Valentino speaks to a range of medical VR enthusiasts to learn more.
ntil fairly recently, surgeons were considered the journeymen of medical life. Not associated with the expensive university educations and academic learning of proper physicians, genuine doctors who needed to know how to diagnose ailments and prescribe cures. Rather, surgeons were semi-professionals, learning mainly by experience. Until the Age of Enlightenment, in fact, many European surgeons would even balance cutting limbs with cutting hair. A whisper of this history continues to this day – the red and white poles that grace many barber shops represent the bloody bandages sawbones once so infamously employed. Now, of course, the reputation of surgery has essentially reversed. There’s a reason we colloquially imagine brain surgeons to be the
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cleverest people around, and why proud parents dream that their sons or daughters might one day take up a scalpel. The reason for this transformation, moreover, is obvious: training. Whereas they were once taken on as apprentices, like grubby tanners or brewers, the aspiring American surgeon can expect to study for over a decade, gaining a robust knowledge in biology and chemistry before they ever start operating. It goes without saying, meanwhile, that more complicated types of surgery require even more practice. To put it another way, it’s probably telling that the UK has a mere 400 heart surgeons. Yet, if modern surgeons are a far cry from their fringe-chopping forebears, many of the same challenges persist. For, if modern surgeons can certainly practice their craft on animals and
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