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quite challenging, especially for less experienced physicians, but now
with video laryngoscopes, you're looking at a TV and can see exactly
what you're doing, instead of being crunched over the patient."
The big unknown is 3D, which is still trying to establish a foothold,
but which has its advocates. The ability to more clearly define and
identify critical structures via 3D has turned his OR into "a classroom
of the future," says Daniel Eun, MD, vice chief of robotic surgery at
Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. "Residents are able to see a
level of detail in 3D that wasn't possible with 2D. So they gain more
thorough and dynamic surgical training."
The OR of the future may also be home to another 3D application —
3D printing may one day make it possible to create virtually exact
duplicates of human organs, which can then be used to replace dis-
eased originals. "That's something there's a lot of interest in," says Mr.
Maliff. "It's going to be fun to see how that evolves, and how the FDA
gets involved in that."
Keeping track
Will improved hand hygiene be one of the features of the well-orches-
trated OR of the future? It might, thanks to real-time locating systems
(RTLS), which are already being implemented by some hospitals, says
Mr. Maliff. Electronic tags worn by staff members will, for example,
show that they spent time at the sink (and presumably washed their
hands while they were there).
The broader goal of RTLS is asset and personnel tracking. So, for
example, when a scrub nurse accesses the system, a message goes
out to the appropriate people that the surgeon is closing, that post-op
should get ready, that housekeeping should stand by to turn the room
over and so forth.
"People bristle when they think about being tracked," says Mr.
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