One blue surgical drape at a time, the patient disappeared, until all that showed was a triangle of her shaved scalp.
“Ten seconds of quiet in the room, please,” said Dr. David J. Langer, the chairman of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, part of Northwell Health. Silence fell, until he said, “O.K., I’ll take the scissors.”
His patient, Anita Roy, 66, had impaired blood flow to the left side of her brain, and Dr. Langer was about to perform bypass surgery on slender, delicate arteries to restore the circulation and prevent a stroke.
The operating room was dark, and everyone was wearing 3-D glasses. Lenox Hill is the first hospital in the United States to buy a device known as a videomicroscope, which turns neurosurgery into an immersive and sometimes dizzying expedition into the human brain.
Enlarged on a 55-inch monitor, the stubble on Ms. Roy’s shaved scalp spiked up like rebar. The scissors and scalpel seemed big as hockey sticks, and popped out of the screen so vividly that observers felt an urge to duck.
“This is like landing on the moon,” said a neurosurgeon who was visiting to watch and learn.
The equipment produces magnified, high-resolution, three-dimensional digital images of surgical sites, and lets everyone in the room see exactly what the surgeon is seeing. The videomicroscope has a unique ability to capture “the brilliance and the beauty of the neurosurgical anatomy,” Dr. Langer said.
He and other surgeons who have tested it predict it will change the way many brain and spine operations are performed and taught. “The first time I used it, I told students that this gives them an understanding of why I went into neurosurgery in the first place,” Dr. Langer said.
By Denise Grady | The New York Times
Image Credit: CreditBéatrice de Géa / The New York Times
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