PHOENIX – The Abrazo Scottsdale Campus became one of the first hospitals in the country to use new augmented reality guidance technology for a total hip replacement.
Surgeons in Scottsdale used holographic ‘x-ray vision’ technology to perform the procedure on a 65-year-old in the Valley last week.
The new technology projects 3D holograms onto special headgear that lets physicians “see into” the patient’s body during a procedure.
The augmented reality allows surgeons to see surgical instruments, anatomy and joint implants inside the patient in real-time.
“It’s really what we have been trying to do for years in surgery, which is trying to get better visualization of what we are doing but trying to minimize the incision to do that,” Dr. Jimmy Chow, medical director of orthopedics at the Abrazo Scottsdale Campus, said.
Chow said he sees everything he is doing in the surgery even without the incision using the new augmented reality guidance.
The incision is now only required to actually do the work which results in a smaller incision and a much quicker recovery process, according to Dr. Chow’s partner Dr. Josh Silver who was also included in the procedure.
The two other hospitals that are said to have used the technology before the Abrazo Scottsdale Campus include a Harvard affiliate in Boston and Duke.
HipInsight, the company behind the system, has partnered with Microsoft to create the new technology.
The company’s augmented reality guided system is the first FDA-cleared surgical platform for joint replacement to be contained entirely within a head-mounted device.