Perhaps if I had not called this meeting “Hybrid Operating Rooms” but how you can be kept alive by new technologies in medicine more than twenty people would have come to the meeting. Our speaker Bruce Landau from the University of Pennsylvania was excellent. We are often lucky that very talented visitors to Boquete offer us their time when they are here.
Bruce discussed some of the changes in modern surgery and how computer and imaging technology is remaking the operating room. The cost of these new high tech operating rooms can exceed the six million but the outcome to patients is worth the investment.
The bottom line message was that the practice of medicine is changing, rapidly. The use of new technology is allowing for less invasive surgery and lower risk of infection. Although these new techniques are now being used in Canada, Europe and the USA, as of now they are not available in Panama. That might be changing soon and based upon what I saw today if I needed surgery that can be done in a hybrid operating room I would without a doubt travel to a location that has the technology.
This link to an article in USA Today might be of interest to those who missed the presentation. LINK
Sorry if you missed the meeting because many of us will face these life altering decisions in the future for either ourselves or loved ones.
I didn’t attend because I didn’t want to hear about great medical advances that are not available in Panama and that I couldn’t pay for if I went to the U.S.
Judy
I want you to know that hybrid operating room endovascular procedures are making there way into central and south america. The stent graft companies are there and positioned. The next step is bring hybrid operating room technology to the hospitals. I am an advocate for this concept and will do all I can to bring this medical advancement to Panama.
Thank you
Bruce