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Posts from the ‘Surgery’ Category

Sep 6

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SurgAware: Enhancing Informed Consent via iPhone

Martin Young, an ENT surgeon from South Africa, informed me about SurgAware, a new iPhone application that was meant to enhance informed consent. Unfortunately, the app is not for free, but details below.

We at SurgAware know that deciding to have an operation can be difficult. Whenever possible, a patient needs to know all the details – the reason for the operation, the alternatives to surgery, the consequences of not having the operation, and all the things that can potentially go wrong.

SurgAware puts all those risks into writing, in a format that can be emailed to anyone who needs to know. If you are a patient, you can either email the list to your doctor for discussion at your next appointment, or check to see that all topics have been covered. If you are a doctor or a nurse, you can use the list as a reference during the process of taking consent, email your patient, copy the email to yourself, and then have evidence of having disclosed the information.

A “Comment” function allows you, doctor or patient, to send a comment on the information in the application back to us, the producers, so that there is continual feedback on the content and general consensus on what needs to be included in the discussion.

Aug 13

DoSurgery: Community Site for Surgeons

Do-Surgery.com is intended as an e-learning and e-sharing resource for orthopaedic surgeons and it is now added to my huge list of community sites for scientists and physicians which features 49 community sites. You have to register on Do-Surgery in order to access the content.

Jun 2

Health 2.0 News: iPad, I-Patients, Wii and computer viruses

  • Wii can do better (Spoonful of Medicine): The potential benefits of using Nintendo Wii in health management and medicine/rehabilitation.

“Our research shows that implantable technology has developed to the point where implants are capable of communicating, storing and manipulating data,” he said. “They are essentially mini computers. This means that, like mainstream computers, they can be infected by viruses and the technology will need to keep pace with this so that implants, including medical devices, can be safely used in the future.”

Feb 3

2 Comments

SoundBite: Hearing Aid on Your Teeth

I love innovation in healthcare.

For people with conductive hearing loss, Bone Anchored Hearing Aids that are implanted surgically use the skull to transmit sound to the inner ear. SoundBite bypasses this problem.

SoundBite hearing system is the world’s first and only non-surgical and removable hearing solution designed to imperceptibly transmit sound via the teeth to help people who are essentially deaf in one ear regain spatial hearing ability and rejoin the conversation of life. It employs a well-established principle called bone conduction to deliver clear, high quality sound to the inner ear. Nearly invisible when worn, the SoundBite system consists of an easy to insert and remove ITM (in-the-mouth) hearing device – which is custom made to fit around either the upper left or right back teeth – and a small microphone unit worn behind the ear. No modifications to the teeth are required.

Source of Photo: Sonitus Medical

Reference: Preliminary Evaluation of a Novel Bone-Conduction Device for Single-Sided Deafness

More pictures here…

Nov 24

3 Comments

Surgical Videos Now and in the 1930s

Every time I check Or-Live.com, I’m amazed by the number of quality surgical videos uploaded there. They actually stream videos from surgeries live. State-of-the-art content.

But if you browse the Wellcome Library, you will find surgical videos from the 1930s created by the British Medical Association. A few examples:

Also Bob Coffield just published photos of medical records written in the 1930s. Nice way to compare the old system to the new one. Has it changed a lot?

 

Sep 18

2 Comments

Web 2.0 and Surgery: New Collection

In the era of evidence-based medicine, being up-to-date is crucial especially for surgeons. The newest collection on Webicina, the first medical web 2.0 guidance service,  was designed to help them get closer to web 2.0. Surgery 2.0 is a free comprehensive resource containing all the web 2.0 tools from quality blogs and communities to online slideshows and mobile applications focusing on surgery.
surgery web 20

Please take a look at the table of contents:

      Next week, we will release the Spanish and Portuguese versions of PeRSSonalized Medicine, the easiest medical information tracking application.

      webicina newsletter

      Aug 11

      4 Comments

      Virtual Patients and Surgical Guinea Pigs

      I’ve been writing about the possible medical implications of virtual worlds for years. We do case presentations in Second Life and organize medical events in virtual environments almost for free. And now here are two more examples.

      Dr James Bateman (Coventry & Warwickshire University Hospitals) talks  about how virtual patients can be integrated into simulation-based teaching.

      Wired wrote about a tool I tried myself at the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference in Long Beach, CA this year.

      More about medicine in the virtual worlds:

      Aug 3

      Surgery and Web 2.0: Call for Submissions

      I’ve been creating free medical Web 2.0 Guidance Packages on Webicina.com for patients and for doctors as well. Such a package contains all the quality selected web 2.0 tools from blogs and communities to online slideshows and wikis that focus on one medical condition or medical specialty.

      The next package will be dedicated to Surgery, so if you know

      • quality blogs
      • news sites
      • resources, tools
      • podcasts
      • community sites
      • Twitter users
      • wikis
      • Youtube channels; video sites
      • mobile applications
      • slideshows
      • clinical cases, images

      focusing on surgery, please let me know so I can include your suggestions.

      Thank you!

      That’s what we have so far:

      Webicina.com main page

      Mar 16

      5 Comments

      Live Twitter Surgery – Awake Craniotomy

      I’m amazed how innovative the Henry Ford Hospital is. They streamed the first live surgery on Twitter a few weeks ago (CNN report) and now they will perform another live Twurgery, an awake craniotomy. Follow them on Twitter for more information.

      Dr. Kost Elisevich and Dr. Steven Kalkanis will lead a neurosurgical team from Henry Ford Hospital as we follow a patient undergoing an awake craniotomy with speech mapping for the purpose of resecting a brain tumor.

      The case: The patient is a 47 year old male who has had a lifelong history of seizures, dating back to when he suffered a stroke as an infant with resulting febrile convulsions. Over the last few decades, his seizures have been reasonably well controlled, and he has worked most of his adult life. He is married and has two grown children. However, his seizures have increased in frequency dramatically over the last several weeks. Imaging studies revealed a partially enhancing lesion in the anterior portion of his right temporal lobe, most consistent with a low-to-intermediate grade glioma, a type of malignant brain tumor.

      twitter-surgery

      Photo courtesy: Henry Ford Hospital

      Mar 7

      7 Comments

      VuMedi: A surgeon-only video sharing website

      VuMedi is the 29th addition to my extended list of medical/scientific video sites. VuMedi is a surgeon-only video sharing website where you can view, upload, and discuss surgical videos.

      vumedi

      Please let me know if you know more similar sites.

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