by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | March 07, 2014
From the March 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
A hybrid operating room has all of the aspects of a traditional operating room but it’s also equipped with imaging technologies including X-rays and CT and MRI scanners. Over the past few years, these rooms have become popular since having all of the technologies in one room allows surgeons to operate more efficiently.
According to a recent Millennium Research Group report, the operating room integration market will grow about 15 percent per year through 2015. As these rooms become more popular, the demand for hybridcompatible devices increases as well.
Siemens’ Artis zeego is the first multi-axis system that uses KUKA robotic technology, which is also used in factory automation. “What we did is added a C to this,” says Sudhir Kulkarni, segment director for hybrid ORs at Siemens Healthcare. “The robotic technology has been around for a while but we used it in imaging.”
The robot has six rotational axes that allow the surgeon to maneuver the C-shaped X-ray device around the patient. The surgeon can then get a 3-D map of the position of the blood vessels, the instruments used and the stents that are to be implanted during vascular surgery.
Using the device, the surgeon can examine internal organs from many different perspectives and view more anatomical details including the tiniest blood vessels.
With this system, surgeons have all of the benefits of the traditional floor and ceiling mounted systems with none of the disadvantages. For example, with a floor mounted system, lights can be positioned on the ceiling, but it’s only good for imaging above the diaphragm. A ceiling mounted system is great for full body imaging, but it’s hard to get the required air flow and requires longarmed lights since it’s above the table.
Since the Artis zeego’s introduction three years ago, its sales have dramatically surpassed ceiling mounted systems. Hospital installs currently ring in at 132 for the system, which is double the number of ceiling mounted systems ever installed,” says Kulkarni. GE’s Discovery IGS 730 doesn’t use the exact same technology as the zeego, but it still is its closest competitor. GE claims it’s the only system on the market that is completely mobile, which is enabled by a laser rotating guided technology that lets the system know where it is in the room.
“It’s guided along trajectories and that really makes installation in the room much more flexible than other systems and it also basically removes all of the constraints that are attached with rails that are fixed on the ceiling,” says Emmanuel Abate, marketing manager of premium angiography at GE Healthcare.
