Leveraging Extended Reality in Surgical Stages
Everyday medical institutions admit millions of patients globally, with septicemia, heart failure, osteoarthritis, pneumonia and diabetes mellitus being amongst the most frequent diagnoses in the US. Nearly 310 million major surgeries are performed around the globe annually with up to 50 million in the US alone. As the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts the fraction of the population at the age of 60 and above to accelerate and make up 2 billion by 2050, there is no doubt that the number of surgical treatments will gradually increase in the next decades.
While the worldwide market of minimal invasive surgeries is projected to reach $44 billion by 2030, growing from $20.5 billion in 2019, the global general surgery device market is estimated to land at $26.5 billion by 2026. Promising an acceleration advanced by technological development, investment into R&D and integration of robotics. Despite the devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the healthcare institutions worldwide, Deloitte predicts an opportunity for the whole system rapid recovery, stimulated by the transformation and evolution of digital health technologies.
Extended Reality (XR) technologies like Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality (AR, VR & MR) will play a major role in this acceleration, with AR & VR healthcare market alone expected to reach $10.82 billion by 2025. With each of the technologies containing their benefits that could make a difference in the healthcare industry. The AR capabilities to overlay real-world objects and environments with digital capabilities, VR capabilities to submerges users into interactive virtual environments and MR capabilities that allows to both overlay and interact with digitally enhanced real-world objects and environments.
XR combinations that utilizes several capabilities from each of these technologies can serve as the necessary leverage for the predicted system recovery. With that being said you can find out more about each of these technologies and their integration into healthcare in our “How Immersive Technology Could Enhance Healthcare of The Post-Pandemic Reality” article.
Nevertheless, immersive technology is no news in the realm of healthcare and has quite a wide implementation in fields like anesthesiology, neurosurgery, gynecology and rehabilitation, where it is vastly used to enhance training, upskilling, reskilling and education. Today, however, we would like to talk about using Extended Reality during different surgical stages, the potential advantages it can deliver for both medical specialists and patients around the globe.
The aging of the population and the potential increase in numbers of patients that require both major and minor surgery will push medical institutions to seek more efficient solutions that can be both cost and time effective. This will touch upon surgical planning, preoperative stage, surgery itself as well as postoperative treatment. Immersive technology can provide great assistance as well as cover many aspects including advanced visualization, 3D planning, pre-operation process simulation. XR can be utilized for both common surgical procedures like appendectomy, carotid endarterectomy, cataract surgery, cesarean section (c-section) and many more. As well as highly complex surgeries like craniectomy, spinal osteomyelitis surgery and even oesophagectomy.
The advanced capabilities of XR headsets like Varjo XR-3 and Vrgineers XTAL 3, such as high visual fidelity, extended field of vision, eye-tracking and many more, enable a tremendous variety of implementations that can enhance each of the surgical stages: preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative. At this point we would like to take a closer look at the potential XR implementation has in each of these stages.
EXTENDED REALITY IN PREOPERATIVE STAGE
The stage where the patient or the person acting on their behalf makes the decision to carry on with the surgery is considered as the preoperative phase. According to a recent study, when it comes to surgery, only 11% of patients prefer to make the decision independently, with the majority of surgeons (57%) and patients (54%) preferring the shared decision-making (SDM). During this stage it is essential to prepare the patient physically and psychologically, setting the stage and providing the person with enough knowledge and data. On the other hand, this is the phase where the surgeon is planning for the operation, visualizing the operation, considering alternative variants for the surgical procedure and selecting the best possible solution for the particular case.
During this stage XR could serve as a great tool that can be used to visualize the condition in both augmented, mixed and virtual reality environments, giving patients the much-needed help to comprehend and simplify the complex new information. A number of studies conducted over the past decade have shown great advantages of 3D visualizations over traditional 2D methods. It can also provide specialists with the tool to not only visualize the collected diagnostic materials, like X-rays, bone scans, magnetic resonance images (MRI) or computerized tomography (CT) scans in 3D but utilize them for pre-operative VR simulation of the surgical procedure.
EXTENDED REALITY IN INTRAOPERATIVE STAGE
The start of the intraoperative stage can be considered once the patient enters the operating room (OR) where they are being monitored, prepped and anesthetized for the surgery. This stage includes the surgery itself as well as nursing activities to ensure the patient’s safety, infection prevention, monitoring of vital signs, response to the procedure and anesthesia.
Today, many institutions already use XR for medical specialist training, upskilling, reskilling and education of procedure practices and equipment set ups. Even though it will at least be a few more years before we will be able to speak about full-fledged XR implementations into the operative stages, which will require setting up a number of processes from procedure clearance, procedure safety evaluation, evaluation of clinical trials and much more. We can already say that the surgery XR enhancement is on its way to reshape how the entire process works today, allowing innovation to reshape entire healthcare systems with the digital capabilities of immersive technology. Medical specialists can utilize the power of XR for operative assistance, visualization, guidance and communication in practically any healthcare direction, from ophthalmology and neurology to cardiology and gynecology.
EXTENDED REALITY IN POSTOPERATIVE STAGE
As the operation is complete the patient enters the recovery stage, which is also referred to as the postoperative stage, where the patient receives additional care inside or outside of the medical facility. The postoperative stage also includes the after-surgery recovery process, where patients are provided more information on the current status of their condition and the next steps in the treatment or to full recovery.
During this stage XR can be used to showcase the progress that was made and visualize the after-surgery change, simplifying the process of delivering information. The technology can also help recreate conducted surgery for education and training purposes, to help surgeons practice and advance their skills and at the same time can be used to create a hands-on interactive simulation for medical practitioners and students. Immersive technology can also serve to help during the recovery and rehabilitation process, utilizing the gamification capabilities of immersive technology that could be used for a more effective recovery process once combined with traditional rehabilitation processes.
While we are still approaching the stage where XR will be massively implemented and require extensive clinical trials, we have come quite a long way with both the technological advancement as well as the shift of the mindsets regarding the implementation. We can only expect to see more pioneering use cases and next level advancements in the upcoming few years, this, without doubt, is the beginning of a new XR enhanced healthcare era.
Authors: Alex Dzyuba, Lucid Reality Labs Founder & CEO | Anna Rohi, Lucid Reality Labs Senior Marketing & Communications Manager. You can find the original article published here, for more articles and news on immersive technology follow Lucid Reality Labs Blog.
