of his hands
and fingers
so nothing is
contorted.
If your
ORs were
designed for
traditional
open sur-
gery, they
may not be
set up to perform laparoscopic procedures.
"If you're not set up correctly and focused so intently on the act, 2
hours will go by and you can't move your neck. Or you're stiff and
your shoulders are cramped. Why? Because you weren't correctly
positioned when you set up," says Dr. Ross. "You can hold an awk-
ward position for a few minutes, but you'll say, 'Man, I can't move'
when you release that tension."
Dr. Ross positions the monitor across from the patient at eye level so
he's not hunched over or looking up or sideways to see. "Set up the
screen so that the surgeon's neck is not strained to one side," he says.
"You want him standing in a straight-up position so the natural curve in
the back is preserved."
Surgeons should take a break to stretch during longer procedures,
adds Dr. Ross. One study found that surgeons who take 90-second
breaks to perform a variety of stretching exercises during procedures
reported improvements in their physical and mental well-being.
But it's difficult for surgeons to maintain a good posture while work-
ing in the 3D space of the closed abdomen and looking at it in 2D on a
TV screen. When cutting or grasping with a rigid, fixed-length instru-
1 1 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7
"You think of surgery as a gentle art, but
surgeons can be very, very sore by day's end."
— Howard Ross, MD,
chief of colon and rectal
surgery at Temple
University Hospital
in Philadelphia, Pa.
Temple
University
Health
System
