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GERD Center at Florida Hospital. "But if you ask a young surgeon what kind of
improvement there will be over the next 25 years … well, if you go back to
1989, they were just beginning to do laparoscopic cholecystectomies in a couple
of places then. I don't think we foresaw 25 years ago what's going on today."
Drs. Ross and Rosemurgy are also working with various companies to implement other improvements that may become more widely available. One of the
devices they've developed reorients the laparoscopic view so that it's able to be
broadcast onto the patient's abdominal wall, says Dr. Rosemurgy. "It's reformatted so people can see where their instruments are," he explains. "One of the
problems with novice surgeons is that they don't know where their instruments
are until they're in the view of the camera. If they've got to pull the camera
back, find out where they are and then advance the camera with the instrument
sets, it takes some time. If you have an operation where you have to do that 30
times, and each time takes a minute, you've just made the operation 30 minutes
longer."
They're also working to develop what they call laparoscopic "no-fly zones."
It's possible with the new camera they've developed to designate areas as off
limits, and if a surgeon ventures into the zone, an alarm will sound.
"I think the answer to the question of what the future holds lies in some of
these things," says Dr. Rosemurgy. "The trocars will be smaller, the cameras will
be brighter, but more importantly, we're going to come up with new paradigms
for patient safety, and develop new techniques for education and training." OSM
E-mail jb urg er@outpatientsurg ery.net.
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