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World's First Transcontinental Anesthesia
An anonymous reader writes "Medical Daily reports: 'Video conferences may be known for putting people to sleep, but never like this. Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and his team of McGill's Department of Anesthesia achieved a world first on August 30, 2010, when they treated patients undergoing thyroid gland surgery in Italy remotely from Montreal. The approach is part of new technological advancements, known as 'Teleanesthesia', and it involves a team of engineers, researchers and anesthesiologists who will ultimately apply the drugs intravenously which are then controlled remotely through an automated system.'"
World's First Transcontinental Anesthesia
When I read that title and saw that picture, I thought they were talking about a service where an anesthesia team puts someone to sleep for a 14 hour transcontinental flight. Anyone else?
Sadly, the field of teledildonics is still lagging behind...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's gonna suck for them, but drop medical costs for me...
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Is there end to end encryption for this? What if a bit gets dropped? Is there a CRC above and beyond the standard CRC already done? Not sure I trust this...
K Man
Fortunately medicine is almost all metric these days. It would really be a bad thing if a Mars-lander-like unit conversion bug were to happen.
For one very simple reason: network outage. If the anesthesiologist is present, s/he can react if something goes wrong. If they aren't, the patient may well be SOL.
I am officially gone from
We're slowly getting closer to stabbing someone in the face over the internet
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
A whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death".
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
This is truly a breakthrough, but not one with which I am particularly thrilled. I am definitely not comfortable with my life being in the hands of a doctor half way around the world with only a small view of what is going on, and one that depends entirely on network availability.
Also, if something goes wrong that is beyond the scope of what the robot is capable of, how am I guaranteed a competent doctor will be right there locally ready to step in and take over?
While this might be a big TECHNOLOGICAL advancement, I can't really see how this is a MEDICAL advancement or a viable cost-saving measure for health care.
This is just great - soon doctors won't need to live anywhere near the dirty people they have to care for. The doctor class could safely live on a few tropical islands and still provide care for the masses.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I have to say, this is an astonishingly bad idea
I know telesurgery has been around for years, but it almost always includes laparoscopic and otherwise routine procedures. General anesthesia is not a "sure thing" and thousands of patients have unforeseen and dangerous complications in anesthesia every year. The immediate responsiveness of a clinician in these scenarios can mean the difference between survival or death of the patient. Furthermore, anesthesia is far from an exact science- can a remote system analyze the perceived BMI of the patient and compensate for it? Yes, it can, but only in a strictly controlled environment in which everything goes right. In trauma surgery or emergency procedures, minutes matter, and a living, breathing anesthesiologist is a necessary component to every OR.
My university has loads of remote learning resources that have a similar effect!
Therac 25 much?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hi Doctor Nick!
This is fantastic!! Now we can outsource all anesthesiologists to India and reduce the costs of healthcare for everyone!
After all, it worked great for call centers and programmers!
On a somewhat related note, we first achieved transcontinental euthanasia many decades ago, and we have an alarming rate of post-birth abortions these days.
"By the best count, only 1.5 percent of the nation's roughly 6,000 hospitals use a comprehensive electronic record." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31766190/
"If these results were to hold for all hospitals in the United States, computerizing notes and records might have the potential to save 100,000 lives annually,"
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/136847.php
Yes, the availability of a specialist to treat a patient globaly is a huge advancement in the field. However making changes in the way we do simple paperwork can save thousands of lives localy.
Title says it all.
Seriously though, why?
You need as much expertise if not more, at the remote location as you do at the joystick.
"Transcontinental" means "across the (same) continent".
"Intercontinental" means "across (or between) multiple continents".
The Internet is a network of networks. The Transnet is nothing.
--
make install -not war
Some Slashdot stories clearly belong in Idle and are not there. This is clearly the opposite case. It's not about entertainment or something funny and it's definitely technology related. Anyway, I'd like to know what my brother-in-law has to say about this. He's an anesthesiologist who has a home on the west coast [of the US] but works at a hospital in the midwest, so I'm sure he has an opinion about it!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Does no-one else realize that this most likely going to result in even more medical outsourcing (right now reading of X-ray pictures/etc. and lab result interpretation is being outsourced). While I'm not inherently against globalization and the race to the economic bottom (who can provide the service the cheapest) there are obviously some concerns about the quality of care/etc. Although with the US spending 16% of it's GDP (so for every $6 dollars spent in the US today, $1 goes into the health care system) and having poor outcomes (lower life expectancy than virtually all other western nations, higher infant mortality, etc.) things probably can't get much worse.
Thank you please come again
Was accomplished long ago by Yani concerts. My ex once sat next to him on a flight to from NYC to London and claimed to have gotten her best in-flight kip ever just from the proximity. ( True story)
The data came in over an ETHERnet cable?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The problem with "teleanesthesia", as I see it, is that medical knowledge is only a part of what my presence in the OR provides. The ability to physically intervene is something that can't be done by telepresence (not yet, anyway). If the endotracheal tube comes out during surgery, then you're relying on a technician to replace it. If you need a central line (big IV access in the neck or groin), you need a technician or the surgeon to place it. The hundreds of little things like that are what keep an anesthesia care provider with patients in the OR for the entirWell, as a practicing anesthesiologist at a major academic center on the West Coast, I'd call this interesting but not medically practical at the moment. As a technological breakthrough, it's not really all that novel. So they transmitted vital signs around the world along with a video feed? Okay...but how is that any different from a teleconference?
The problem with "teleanesthesia", as I see it, is that medical knowledge is only a part of what my presence in the OR provides. The ability to physically intervene is something that can't be done by telepresence (not yet, anyway). If the endotracheal tube comes out during surgery, then you're relying on a technician to replace it. If you need a central line (big IV access in the neck or groin), you need a technician or the surgeon to place it. The hundreds of little things like that are what keep an anesthesia care provider with patients in the OR for the entire duration of each and every surgery that goes on.
The other issue as I see it is that monitoring the vitals is important, but there are a lot of things that happen in an operating room that you can't monitor as well over a video feed. How much blood is really being lost? Can I visually sweep the floor, the surgical drapes, and the suction canisters easily and get an estimate? A patient can lose a third to half of their blood volume in some cases before you're going to see that reflected in vital signs, by which time you're way behind.
I suppose there is a place for this kind of thing in battlefield medicine and maybe remote third-world locations, but in those cases the anesthesiologist should be considered a consultant to the people on the ground and not "the primary provider", as it were. In order to make this real-world applicable, you'd need a robot on the far end with visual, audio, and tactile feedback, the ability to move around the room, etc - really a surrogate you that you could reliably control as well as your own hands and eyes. Of course, then you've got the issues with dropped connections, security of the feed, etc. What happens when a script-kiddie hacks your anesthesiabot-3000 and goes nuts with the drug delivery system?
Don't get me wrong, like everyone else I'd love to do my job sitting on my couch in my undies via video feed to the "office", but I'm not really sure this much more than a bit of a publicity stunt at this point.e duration of each and every surgery that goes on.
The other issue as I see it is that monitoring the vitals is important, but there are a lot of things that happen in an operating room that you can't monitor as well over a video feed. How much blood is really being lost? Can I visually sweep the floor, the surgical drapes, and the suction canisters easily and get an estimate? A patient can lose a third to half of their blood volume in some cases before you're going to see that reflected in vital signs, by which time you're way behind.
I suppose there is a place for this kind of thing in battlefield medicine and maybe remote third-world locations, but in those cases the anesthesiologist should be con
That's nothing. Bob Ross used to remotely put countless PBS viewers to sleep every week.
Proverbs 21:19
The health care system is most definitely ready for this.
You might be familiar with Nurse Anesthetists, or the newer Anaesthesia Assistant role (often filled by Respiratory Therapists with advanced training). These people are qualified to start IVs, administer drugs, insert breathing tubes, monitor during anaesthesia, and troubleshoot when things go wrong. They can be trained to insert arterial lines, central lines, etc.
The role of the anaesthesiologist then becomes more big-picture... the doc is able to:
* develop a treatment plan
* oversee the patient
* respond to emergencies, and
* attend to the more difficult cases.
Those first two can easily be done remotely, especially under the conditions in the article (like patients in very low-density areas). The point is, there are people available to handle the basic technical skills, and under extreme conditions this system could bring anaesthesia to areas it'd be otherwise unavailable.
Everybody wants fast access to health care. They should diagnose expeditiously, start a treatment plan immediately, and treatment should progress rapidly. We should absolutely embrace ways to free up doctors so they can treat more people, and sooner.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it, but this one is mine.
Seriously, my last operation was trivial yet more than half (literally more than 50%) of the fees went to the anesthetist. This guy comes in gives me a drip and sits down and opens a book about a quarter way through. I woke up briefly half way through the operation and was knocked out again within about 4 seconds. At the end I get woken up, and he's on the last few pages of his book.
He's come in, taken the money, done sweet fuck all, and screwed up, meanwhile the doctor who did all the hard work gets a pittance of the profit of the operation. They get paid through the nose to mostly do nothing. The LEAST they co do is have the decency to actually be there!
I heard about a Montreal Hospital exchanging digital xrays with an Austrialian hospital. When radiologists are asleep in one country, they are awake in the other, and as long as volumes of xrays are within reasonable limits, the radiologists are not overburdened. Most new Xrays are digitalized, so film xrays as we know it is passé, except for dentists, and here too, it is moving to digital.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Okay, so we are using the internet for long distance surgery and what the fuck else.
the USA has a big red button that says, "Press to shut down Internet in case of emergency".
Can we see a problem here?
Be seeing you...
so what happens when we [NO CARRIER] ^(*$&(*%&$#