The Virtual Brain Surgery: Saving Lives by Improving Surgeons’ Training

Virtual reality for healthcare is fundamentally distinct from other virtual reality applications. Healthcare is a sector whose regulations and culture are not immediately receptive to the concept of virtual reality. This does not preclude the development of new virtual reality experiences. Virtual reality promises to aid patients in communicating and improving their quality of life in real-time or over extended periods. Technology should be used in concert with pharmaceuticals, other forms of therapy, and treatments to accomplish this.

This virtual reality trend can democratize education, improve visualization of space and human anatomy, and much more while cutting medical expenses, reducing trauma, and increasing outcomes. Direct, safe, and successful usage of virtual reality is not novel. Indeed, the practice has existed for some years. Indeed, hospitals worldwide are vying to be the pioneers of virtual reality technology. The world’s first entirely VR-based hospital is opened in Israel, and numerous other medical institutes are proud to include VR in their normal activities.

Virtual reality is an excellent tool for patient assessment. It gives visual cues for getting feedback, putting the patient in a better position to analyze and manage their symptoms. VR devices can quickly record crucial information, allowing for any necessary interventions before performing treatments. These instruments that enable the creation of virtual reality are as follows:

Head-mounted display – HMD products such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR, or Google Cardboard are headsets that attach the display lenses and earphones to a head strap. Head-mounted displays immerse the user in virtual reality by projecting objects in front of them.

Smart glasses — a new generation of intelligent technologies, smart glasses are used in healthcare to assist physicians in performing accurate medical operations and diagnostic testing, hence improving clinical outcomes. For example, Google Glass is a pair of glasses used during surgeries to collect footage and visualize data.

Haptic gloves — they are specially developed gloves that allow for natural interaction with virtual surroundings. They are a relatively recent discovery in the virtual reality realm, but they already can transform the healthcare business. Capable of duplicating surgical simulations, haptic gloves can enhance the immersive and successful learning experience.

Rapid advancements in the development of medical devices in the twenty-first century are improving lives. Still, they also introduce a new challenge: training doctors how to use these frequently complex technologies such as virtual brain surgery. Failure to teach them properly, or neglecting to teach them at all, can nullify the potential benefits and expose patients to harm from technologies designed to benefit them.

Previously, a surgeon needed to perform ten to twenty cases to achieve skill in a new surgery. However, as complexity rose, that number increased to between 50 and 100 cases. The current surgical education system is beginning to exhibit flaws, with up to 30% of graduating general surgery residents unable to operate autonomously.

Leaders in health care quality frequently draw inspiration from the aviation industry. It has achieved an incredibly high standard of safety using simulation and other technologies and techniques. While global flying hours have increased in the last two decades, airline fatalities have decreased by nearly 45 percent. Regrettably, we haven’t achieved the same level of success in medicine, where medical errors remain the third biggest cause of mortality.

Can medicine emulate aviation’s success in terms of safety? Recent advancements in virtual brain surgery, augmented reality, and mobile technology promise to shorten the learning curve associated with new medical devices.

Now, brain doctors and patients alike can fly across the brain using Virtual Brain Surgery. Why is this so critical? If you require intricate brain surgery, not only can you picture the operation more clearly, but your surgeon also receives a new understanding. Walter Jean, MD, Chief of Neurosurgery at Lehigh Valley Health Network, is the area’s sole clinician using this ground-breaking technology.

The second advantage of Surgical Theater is that it enables brain surgeons to develop a surgical plan by simulating several scenarios to choose the optimal approach. “The technology originated with air combat pilots. The company’s founders realized they could apply the same technology to the medical field,” Jean explains. As with fighter pilots, brain surgeons can practice specific scenarios to ensure they are completely prepared for their tasks.

By now, you’re probably picturing XR as heroic abilities that aid a hero in doing vital tasks. If that image hadn’t occurred to you already, X-ray vision should do the trick. Extended reality enables surgeons to operate with “X-ray” vision, allowing them to reach their goals safely and stay out of harm’s way by avoiding vital brain “no-fly” zones. “Each patient’s situation is unique. We tailor each operation’s surgical approach to the unique characteristics of the patient,” Jean explains.

Let us begin with virtual reality as a tool for healthcare professional training. It is used to educate and instruct students in medical schools and other comparable institutions. Interaction with a virtual environment enables medical students to acquire knowledge and comprehension of the human brain.

Medical students can practice ‘hands-on’ procedures in a controlled and safe environment. They can make errors — and learning from them – but in a risk-free environment. They interact with a virtual patient and gain abilities to perform virtual brain surgery that they can employ in the real world.
To summarize, the primary advantages of virtual brain surgery and VR in medicine are as follows:

• It saves time and money
• Ability to re-use consistently/refresh skill
• Remotely operable
• Efficiency
• Realistic

The modern technique has several significant advantages for both the patient and the physician.
In preoperative planning, the virtual model enables:
• additional diagnostics, objective model measurement data, simulation of the procedure, and matching the optimal virtual brain surgery method for the case.
• The ability to predict the outcome and choose/create an optimal implant that is compatible with the patient’s anatomy.
• The ability to design surgical guides for proper tool guidance during the procedure and the verification.

Apart from the numerous benefits, physicians suggest the following difficulties associated with preoperative surgery planning:

• Creating virtual 3D models is a time-consuming operation, especially when dealing with soft tissues.
• It is necessary to conduct high-resolution testing to obtain high precision (the applied tests refer to the distance between the planes no longer than 1mm).
• The necessity of preoperative planning.
• Nonetheless, the issues appear immaterial considering the benefits derived from virtual surgical planning. The prospect of performing complex surgeries early – virtually – also contributes to the method’s increasing popularity.

The advancement of technology has also increased the popularity of virtual brain surgery process simulations, but they are still not frequent. The advancement of technical capabilities and the automation of physician support operations enable us to anticipate the growth of such acts.

According to a World Health Organization assessment, the increasing complexity in medical technology, insufficient training, and long learning curves are the leading causes of adverse outcomes associated with new technologies. As a result, we must act quickly to improve surgical team training, assessment, and coordination.

We already see the consequences of poor training and assessment in several areas of innovation. For instance, in a trial dubbed SYMPLICITY HTN-3, investigators were investigating a device that had the potential to cure hypertension by severing certain nerves to the kidneys. The study concluded that there was no advantage. Nonetheless, a retrospective investigation determined that one of the reasons the study failed was that 30% of the physicians who participated had performed this sophisticated technique only once before the trial, and half had conducted it no more than twice.

If we do not address training and assessment issues, we risk postponing or eliminating important developing medical innovations.

It is incumbent to innovators to work together with patients, institutions, industry, professional organizations, and regulatory bodies to address the issues associated with the rapid adoption of useful but complex new technology. Using virtual reality augmented reality, and mobile apps to enhance training and communication can help assure safer surgery and allow innovations to reach their full potential in the health care system.

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