Covenant Health has unveiled a more advanced and efficient way to conduct surgery with its Hybrid Operating Room.
Chief Medical Officer Emeritus Dr. Robert Salem says things in the OR were a bit more complicated before this technology came along.
"When one would do, let's say an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which is a large swelling of the main artery in the abdomen, one would have to make a long incision from the breast bone down to the pubic area and remove the aneurysm and replace that with a synthetic graft," Salem said.
That type of operation would take about three or four hours, he said, and the patient would stay in the hospital for seven to ten days. Plus, the recovery process would last for months.
Now, advanced technologies have simplified processes, meaning no huge incision in the case of this example.
"And that's called a endovascular surgery where through a catheter placed in the groin. It's passed into the aneurysm where one can deploy a graft. And after it's deployed, the blood then drains through the graft and the aneurysm wall collapses around the graft," Salem explained.
Comparatively, this procedure can be done in one to two hours and the patient can go home the next day.
"So it's a huge advancement and this room allows us to do it safely and competently," he said.
This is only one instance of the many advantages that come with the Hybrid OR.
"State of the art surgical equipment, state of the art angiographic equipment, radiographic equipment which is 3D high definition which gives us more precise visualization of the organs and arteries involved," Salem said.
This is the only Hybrid OR in the Lubbock region.
