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New technology helping surgical prep at Geisinger
DANVILLE – New technology at Geisinger Medical Center can help ease your mind before surgery. Surgeons can now obtain a life-sized 3D preview of your insides…and they can touch and feel before making an incision.
Doctors use a patient’s MRI and CT scan and a 3D printer to produce exact replicas of internal organs and bones. Dr. Aalpen Patel, Chairman of the Department of Radiology and 3D Lab Medical Director, “Sometimes with patients, we tell them what we’re going to do to help them, but having a model helps them understand that better, and also education of our staff, as well as medical students, residents, and so on as well.”
Dr. Patel says however, outcome impact from this new technology is still being studied, “Longitude studies have not been done to show that this technology will have outcome impact on patient care. So we know that by doing some of these things, we can reduce time and perhaps make it safer. But to definitively prove that…we haven’t done that yet because the technology is so new. So I’m sure those studies will be done in the future.”
They say with tricky surgeries and unusual cases, they can use realistic, life-like models to examine your organs before they operate. We’ll have more from Dr. Patel and his colleague Ed Stefanowicz, a Team Leader of 3D Imaging and MRI, on an upcoming airing of WKOK Sunrise.
