Keyhole surgery is set to become safer, more exacting and faster at a Hamilton private hospital, the first in Australasia to bring Hollywood digital technology to its operating theatres.
Braemar Hospital has just installed monitors which allow surgeons to see images inside the body like never before.
Laparoscopic or keyhole surgery has been around since the mid 1980s, allowing doctors to see structures inside the body magnified and projected onto operating room monitors.
The latest in laparoscopic technology is 4k ultra HD. Hamilton’s private Braemar Hospital is the first in Australasia to get Hollywood digital technology.
The new monitors deliver four times more pixels than the normal HD screens surgeons use and 64 times as many colours.
They provide the sharpest, most colour-correct images ever seen with the naked eye.
“It’s not just a bit better than what they had before, it’s a huge amount better,” Dr Greg Spark, Braemar Hospital anaesthetist told ONE News.
“Often surgeons are operating within millimetres of disaster and they need to know exactly where they are. And the best resolution, the best picture they can get, makes it safer,” he said.
Ear, nose and throat surgeon Dr John Clarkson says the new technology “gives you great accuracy and precision in where you’re going. And you can be much more confident that you’re staying away from those important structures. It’s a dramatic difference”.
The new 4k HD monitors are three times more expensive than normal standard definition screens, but better accuracy should also deliver greater efficiency.
“[With] that better clarity, potentially you get less trauma and so less bleeding and so that really speeds up the surgery,” said Dr Clarkson, who tried out the new monitors for the first time yesterday.
The new monitors will be up and running in four of Braemar’s eight theatres by next month.