Collaboration between different departments and different medical specialties is one of the many reasons why Cincinnati Children’s can offer cutting-edge, state-of-the-art care for your child. One excellent example of that collaborative spirit is the partnership between the departments of Surgery and Radiology to plan and build a Hybrid operating room (OR), which opened recently in February 2018.
The Hybrid OR allows interventional radiologists and surgeons to work together in an operating room environment equipped with x-ray, CT, and ultrasound capabilities to make some surgeries safer and less invasive, which can decrease recovery time and improve outcomes. Together, the interventional radiologists and surgeons can combine their individual expertise and use these imaging technologies to help guide their procedures. This collaboration may improve how some surgeries are currently being performed, and hopefully result in the creation of entirely new types of procedures, which have yet to be developed.
Since the opening of the Hybrid OR, nearly 50 procedures have been performed. Interventional radiologists have worked together with 15-20 different surgeons from many different surgical sub-specialties, including general surgery, urology, orthopedics, colorectal, neurosurgery, adolescent gynecology, and transplant surgery. Not only can the imaging technologies in the Hybrid OR help guide surgeries, they can also be used for imaging evaluation before, during, or after a procedure. This allows your child to remain in the same room for both the surgery and imaging rather than having to be transferred to the Radiology department for imaging.
In addition, Cincinnati Children’s has a research facility (the Interventional Radiology Translational Research and Simulation Lab) that has the same imaging and navigational technologies as the clinical Hybrid OR. This research lab can serve as a “practice Hybrid OR” for interventional radiologists and surgeons where together they can rehearse new techniques of image-guided surgery and share and combine their skill sets to develop even better ways to treat your child.
Contributed by Dr. John Racadio and and edited by Janet Adams, (ADV TECH-ULT).
