Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/477058
short and made it harder to see. Now, 45 cm length scopes can give surgeons better access and images of the abdomen. Articulating scopes are another advancement that offer an easy way for a surgeon to see more angles with the touch of button. Articulating scopes are becoming more prevalent, especially as new platforms — including many 3D systems — require their use. They offer more angles and the latest "chip on the tip" technology for a sharper focus. These scopes mean you won't have to switch out a zero-degree rigid laparoscope for a 30-degree one several times during a procedure, sav- ing time and maintaining your view. However, this technology comes at an added expense, and many experienced surgeons, including me, find using angled non-adjustable scopes to be comparable, if used cor- rectly. While today's HD monitors are a huge improvement over the small, standard ones of the past, they continue to improve. LED screens offer brighter images than traditional LCD ones, and many of the newer models contain several input ports so you can view a larger range of information at once. To more easily view split screens, larg- er monitors go all the way up to 50 inches, although those aren't always practical for minimally invasive suites. If you're shopping for new monitors, look at the size of your OR as well as whether the surgeon will be splitting the screen to view multiple images at once, and how many people will be in the OR at one time. Manufacturers are looking beyond offering a higher resolution to improve a surgeon's sight. One company offers narrow-band imaging, which uses special blue and green filters to help highlight the blood ves- sels while performing surgery. Since tumors have more blood vessels than tissue, the imaging systems using this technology claim to help a surgeon more easily see small tumors. Another technology introduced by one manufacturer is meant to identify dark areas on an image and automatically adjust the pixels on the screen to lighten hard-to-see anatomical structures. There's also a system on the market that uses 1 1 8 O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | M A R C H 2 0 1 5