Minimally invasive therapy & allied technologies : MITAT : official journal of the Society for Minimally Invasive Therapy
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Minim Invasive Ther Allied Technol · Oct 2020
A critical review of the safety of minimally invasive surgery in the era of COVID-19.
The Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected surgical practice around the world. While several abdominal emergencies can be managed effectively and safely using minimally invasive surgery (MIS), the safety of using MIS amid the COVID-19 pandemic has been debated. MIS, including laparoscopy and robotic surgery, is considered an aerosol-generating procedure and some recent research demonstrated possible spread of the virus through aerosol. This review assessed the available evidence on the safety of MIS in the COVID-19 era, explored the possible precautions to be taken when using MIS to prevent exposure of the operating team to infection, and highlighted the recommendations of several surgical societies in this regard. ⋯ According to the available evidence and recommendations of different surgical societies, MIS may be used in the treatment of acute abdominal emergency. However, considerable caution should be taken to avoid the presumed risk of aerosolization of the virus particles during the procedure, which may expose the operating staff to the risk of COVID-19.
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Minim Invasive Ther Allied Technol · Jun 2019
Case ReportsFull-endoscopic uniportal retropharyngeal odontoidectomy for anterior craniocervical infection.
Infections of the anterior craniocervical junction may require surgery. There are various techniques with individual advantages and disadvantages. This study evaluates the full-endoscopic uniportal technique via the anterior retropharyngeal approach for odontoidectomy, decompression, and debridement. ⋯ The full-endoscopic uniportal technique with an anterior retropharyngeal approach can be an adequate and minimally invasive surgical technique for odontoidectomy, decompression, and debridement in infections of the craniocervical junction and can reduce access-related problems. The transoral, transnasal, and retropharyngeal approaches have different surgical fields due to the access trajectories, which must be taken into consideration depending on the anatomy and pathology when selecting a suitable technique.
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Minim Invasive Ther Allied Technol · Apr 2019
ReviewMachine and deep learning for workflow recognition during surgery.
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in artificial intelligence (AI), such as with the automatic and real-time recognition of objects and activities in videos in the field of computer vision. Due to its increasing digitalization, the operating room (OR) promises to directly benefit from this progress in the form of new assistance tools that can enhance the abilities and performance of surgical teams. ⋯ We present here how several recent techniques relying on machine and deep learning can be used to analyze the activities taking place during surgery, using videos captured from either endoscopic or ceiling-mounted cameras. We also present two potential clinical applications that we are developing at the University of Strasbourg with our clinical partners.
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Minim Invasive Ther Allied Technol · Apr 2019
ReviewIntroduction to artificial intelligence in medicine.
The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was coined by John McCarthy in 1956 during a conference held on this subject. However, the possibility of machines being able to simulate human behavior and actually think was raised earlier by Alan Turing who developed the Turing test in order to differentiate humans from machines. Since then, computational power has grown to the point of instant calculations and the ability evaluate new data, according to previously assessed data, in real time. ⋯ More recently, AI has also begun to be incorporated into medicine to improve patient care by speeding up processes and achieving greater accuracy, opening the path to providing better healthcare overall. Radiological images, pathology slides, and patients' electronic medical records (EMR) are being evaluated by machine learning, aiding in the process of diagnosis and treatment of patients and augmenting physicians' capabilities. Herein we describe the current status of AI in medicine, the way it is used in the different disciplines and future trends.