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Mexican Surgeon Uses VR Headset To Distract Patients During Surgery (bbc.com)
dryriver writes: The BBC has a longish story on a Mexican surgeon who makes his patients wear a VR headset that distracts them from the surgical procedure being performed on them. While Dr Mosso cuts and removes and stitches, the patient flies through a 3D VR re-creation of Machu Picchu or other fantastical places, oblivious to being in an otherwise -- for many patients -- stress inducing surgical setting. This removes the need to give patients powerful sedatives or painkillers to keep them calm and prevent their blood pressure from fluctuating. The surgeon only anesthetizes the part of the body where the surgery is performed, while the patient is absorbed in colorful and immersive VR worlds. An excerpt from the report: "The surgeon makes his first cut and blood spills down Ana's leg. She's surrounded by medical equipment -- stools, trolleys, swabs, syringes -- with super-bright surgical lamps suspended above the bed. Her vital signs are displayed on monitors just behind. But Ana is oblivious. She's immersed in a three-dimensional re-creation of Machu Picchu. She begins her journey with a breathtaking aerial view of the ancient city clinging to the mountainside, before swooping down to explore the details of stepped terraces, moss-covered walls and tiny stone huts. Mosso watches her carefully. A 54-year-old surgeon at Panamerican University in Mexico City, he's on a mission to bring virtual reality into the operating room. Mosso is using VR as a high-tech distraction technique, allowing surgeons to carry out operations that would normally require powerful painkillers and sedatives, with nothing more than local anaesthetic. He's trying to prove that reducing drug doses in this way not only slashes costs for Mexico's cash-strapped hospitals, but cuts complications and recovery times for patients too."
A virtual aerial tour of an archeological site is going to make me forget that someone is going all Ginsu knife on my appendix. OK.
I would probably be less comfortable with a vr headset on.
I've watched myself be cut open once and stitched up 7 times, always with a keen sense of curiosity and interest. It's never freaked me out in the slightest, probably the same reason I've needed to be patched up so much. Well, the one time I was only getting five stitches and the ER was really busy so I got left for an hour and a half after being anesthetized, the doctor said to just suck it up even though it had basically worn off.
I'm old enough to remember when acupuncture was brought in for basically all the reasons listed in TFA. Same hype, same claimed benefits and successes.
Maybe there's something to the idea of distracting the brain to reduce the need for anesthetic during surgery, but it's been 40+ years since the first "breakthroughs" using acupuncture and how many surgeons today are using acupuncture during various procedures to eliminate the need for anesthetics?
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... when I got my vasectomy.
Guys at work had been pulling on surgical tubing all week, making my nuts draw up into my jaw.
The doctor put me on a slab with a curtain blocking my view of him. All I could think of was that damned surgical tubing and suddenly ... ... it was a warm, sunny day and I was opening a gate of a picket fence and I was feeling very glad to be going into a cottage where my wide was waiting.
When I came to, the slab was tilted where my head was near the floor and my feet were way up.
The doctor said I had passed out. He said he believed I held my breath the whole fucking time he was working on me!
Then he tells me he needed to patch me up and we could do the other one next time.
I told him, do the other side. If I leave here, I'm never coming back.
And remove that goddam curtain!
And get the nurse to come over and talk to me.
He did all that and I chatted up the nurse with small talk.
So, this idea would have been really helpful, especially if the VR was porn and stuff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
He's just trying to perform surgery on the cheap. He doesn't want to split the bill with an Anesthesiologist .
People going to Mexico to have surgery done by incompetents. Total disaster. The entire world is laughing at us. I alone can fix this!
Wow, talk about being on the cutting edge!
Look, think about if you were at the dentist. All you have to do is keep your mouth open, right? Watching some stuff on a vr headset would be great. The dentist needs the bright light above you so he can't just suspend a TV (plus you could still see the distractions) but a vr headset isolates the view.
I think it's genius.
Many people get motion sickness when in a VR with a moving viewpoint. Having your patient suddenly sit up and vomit would probably not be a good idea during surgery. The simplest solution would probably be to test them on the VR first to see if they are nausea-prone, and choose the surgery VR experience based on that.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Distractions? H no, if its not such a big deal as to require a general anesthetic, then I want to watch in as much detail as possible. Open heart surgery or maybe a prostatectomy? Nope, too big a deal, and would trigger unhelpful actions if they went wrong 'cuz that'd scare me, but, say, surgery to repair broken bones, or remove something not in vital organ areas, yeah, I wanna see...
ive been under general anesthesia once at which time i had a cardiac issue so they started to wake me up, as i understood it, in the semi-revived state i was not as numb and felt a lot of pressure...think gastro and colon inspection with a mandingo camera. i wouldve liked to fall asleep and wake up in blissful ignorance...unless they were showing some POV porn it was awful. my experience with local anesthesia(more then a dental appt) was an oral surgery wisdom teeth removal on one side. they shot me up and let it settle in, i got so dizzy and nauseous that i crawled out of the chair..only lying on the office floor did i start to get relief. i ok'd moving on without issue as i started to feel better after a while(they didnt notice i was on the floor for a while). so what exactly is this saving? maybe for c-sections nd perhaps brain surgery where they must be awake unless tv is wrong.
Nice for those hospitals who can afford high tech entertainment devices and the attendant communication systems required. Could be iffy though if there is a bad connection.
There is a better way to 'distract' the patient. Hypnosis. It's free aside from the need for a skilled operator. No equipment or communication devices required. The operator doesn't even have to be present in the arena.
Not only can hypnosis distract the patient, it can allow the patient to participate in the procedure. Being fully aware, the patient can move muscles, control blood flow and report to the surgeon various sensations.
Countless births and surgical operations have been enhanced with hypnosis. I personally had three teeth pulled with only a mild hypnotic sedation. There was no pain, no bleeding at the time or after although I was fully aware of the crunching of bone during the extraction and the vigorous muscle applied to get those molars out. I spit chunks of bone for several days after.
Hypnosis is associated with magic in the uneducated mind. It's a shame. There is no more natural way to be in tune and in control of our bodies and minds.
...omphaloskepsis often...
It would really depend on what was showing in the VR...What if someone was scared of heights yet are shown huge rock cliffs.
Or for that fact ANY type of phobia??? Plus VR headsets are really not the most comfortable for long periods of time.
"Sorry, That's not covered in your policy. It's too expensive for you. Try this blindfold instead"
At least the title isn't:
"US President uses Mexicans to distract populace during $hit$how."
I used to go to a dentist who offered patients those stupid Sony TV glasses where you could watch a movie.
Actually, I really liked it.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
yep. turns out when you use Anesthesia, you can easily kill someone, so an expensive Anesthesiologist is used. Theoretically, a free market surgeon would offer the option of paying more for anesthesia, but not in America. At least they innovate in small stuff, like laser eye surgery.
I think that America (or nearby medical tourist destination) should have low end doctors, whom will be less competant. The poor, 80 year old can try her luck with a Cuban heart surgeon. India innovates on heart surgery.
https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/17/02/02/2251214/mexican-surgeon-uses-vr-headset-to-distract-patients-during-surgery
As long as the dog is clean enough, an option is to use a trained comfort dog.
As a trained comfort dog, JoJo calms patients in the hot seat. She sits on their laps, tenderly rests her face on their bodies, and patiently distracts them from anything unpleasant happening in their mouths.
gives a nice distracting blowjob.
I don't like 3D movies because the disorientation can literally give me an uncomfortable adrenaline surge. This would be a bad thing if I were under local anesthesia and I saw something in VR that made me feel like the world was spinning. I'd get that surge, and sometimes you can't help but move in your seat, or in this case on the table. That's not what you want when you're under the knife.
OTOH, if they let me pick some music and put on headphones that might help quite a bit. The one time I had local, there was nothing for me to do but chit-chat with the doc while he worked on my hand. The worst part was actually the initial shot. The doctor explained to me that the anesthetic is actually an acid. Before it numbs, it stings. It'd be nice if they could come up with something that's pH balanced and doesn't do that.
I'm jealous that he makes $400K.
These devices actually existed and were the reason lots of innovation in small machinery was done, first steam powered then electrical. Nice chapter in history of engineering and all this due to vaginal hysteria or whatever they called this back then as doctors applying medical procedures to relieve suffering from the affected individuals had to do this manual rubbing and push-pull procedures which was in some cases difficult hence the innovation. The only thing I wonder is how the engineers came about to know all this steamy details in an era not known for its ease on such subjects.
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
It should be pretty easy to fit the VR headset to provide some nitrous oxide to augment the experience. Actually, and this feature could be great for non-medical VR applications, too...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
My dentist used to have a large cartoon poster stuck to the ceiling above the chair. That was a nice distraction, until I burst out laughing while having various dental tools in my mouth. After that, I closed my eyes instead.
Surely not because of the GENES of the people who live in Mexico! It must be the LAND MASS itself, that magically makes Mexico less successful than some other countries, and it must be their LAND MASSES that magically afford anybody who stands on them 'magic powers', like being more intelligent and more law abiding than Mexicans. That's it, isn't it, it can't be their DNA, the TV told me. Over and over and over again.
10 foot wall = 11 foot ladder, or better a yuge long glorious El Chapo tunnel. Murrica!!
This is the beginning of The Matrix.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
A lot of people die because of miscalculated anesthesia. Not a lot of people die of bad VR.
Then they haven't tried the VR version of Resident Evil 7 yet.
... it's already been done. Solomon was quite happily turned into little green wafers after watching beautiful orange scenes of tulips.
Of that time the Doc removed my arm at the elbow. Good times.
I have to say... my surgeon wearing a VR headset during the surgery would distract the bejesus out of me, too!
Oh.
The patient wears it?
Never mind.
... a C-section. I'm eight months pregnant, so this is kind of upwards in my mind (because, well, it scares me as a possibility and my baby is measuring big, so it IS a possibility), but even without VR, women make it through having a c-section all the time, with a spinal block in place to numb the whole area. Heck, women who are much braver than I am actually watch the whole thing in a mirror. (That one still just leaves me aghast that someone can pull that off.) Admittedly, they have a big goal in doing so - being able to interact with their baby as soon as possible, rather than having to come out of a general anesthetic, in addition to the risks of a general that are noted here.
...right around the corner by whatever random US agency believes they have jurisdiction over this kind of thing.
Because it's got to be dangerous in some way right? Won't someone think of the children?
Not only did they exist vibrators were invented as treatment for vapors and hysteria. Women would pretend to have the vapors so the doctor would give them orgasms.