Henry Ford posts live surgery blog

DETROIT -- Henry Ford Hospital is giving the online public an unusual peek inside its operating rooms -- by live Twittering its surgeries.

Hospital surgeons used the free micro-blogging service on Monday to post real-time updates of a robot-assisted surgery performed that morning on a 60-year-old man suffering from kidney cancer.

Using the blogging Web site, doctors uploaded short messages -- or "tweets," as they're called -- directly from a laptop in the darkened operating room, giving Twitter users a play-by-play rundown of the surgery. With Twittering, each message must be concise, using 140 characters or less. At Henry Ford, doctors also answered -- in real time -- questions from users about the surgery.

Updates on the surgery, a difficult procedure in which a large cancerous tumor had to be removed from the patient's kidney, were available to the 385 Twitter users signed up to follow Henry Ford's Twitter feed, hospital officials said.

By posting live updates, hospital officials said they hope to give patients, medical students and doctors better exposure to the hospital's new surgical procedures and technology. In doing so, Henry Ford hopes to tap the same social-networking media that has created buzz in other professions.

"It's interactive," said Dr. Rajesh Laungani, chief resident of urology at Henry Ford Hospital, who was Twittering the updates while the surgeon, Dr. Craig Rogers, sat nearby guiding the tentacle-like arms of the robot from a remote console as they probed inside the patient's body toward the cancerous tumor.

"With the way medicine is going, patients are looking for more information about procedures going on," Laungani said. "This kind of lets them know our world, what we go through in the OR and what kind of new technology we're using."

Promoting surgical robots

With this latest round of blogging, Henry Ford also hopes to better promote the use of surgical robots, large multi-armed machines that assist doctors with making tiny incisions in the body that some medical experts say are more precise and come with fewer complications than more traditional forms of surgery.

The Twitter messages, posted at intervals by Laungani and accompanied by YouTube video snippets of the surgery, helped users follow the surgeon's journey into the body, around vital organs and finally to the cancerous tumor on the kidney using miniaturized instruments attached to the end of the robotic arms.

Dr. Gregory Forzley, board chairman for the Michigan State Medical Society in Lansing, said that as long as precautions are taken to ensure patient privacy, the use of Twitter represents a "novel blend of computer-controlled surgery with real-time public communication."

Twittering can help enlighten the public, much like the way surgeries are discussed on video and television programs but without the graphic reality of surgery itself, Forzley said. At the same time, while novel, Twittering shouldn't be viewed as a replacement for other forms of communication between doctors, patients and their families, Forzley noted.

Joining YouTube, podcasts

In the operating room, surgical team members wore three-dimensional glasses and watched the surgery in real-time on large flat-panel screens, which showed video taken by tiny cameras inside the patient's body. The patient, whose name wasn't released by the hospital, consented to the Twittering, Henry Ford officials said. Surgeons Tweeted that the tumor was successfully removed.

Henry Ford first used Twitter in a surgery in January to post live updates of a robot-assisted bladder removal. It also broadcast that operation live to a robotic urology symposium in Las Vegas, attended by about 400 physicians.

The seven-hospital health system has employed other online media to better connect with patients and the medical community, posting YouTube videos and Podcasts that offer medical advice or pointers for nutrition and exercise. It also uses Twitter, which it began utilizing last fall, for updates on events, educational seminars and other types of health information.

"People are looking for health information in a wide variety of areas," said Bill Ferris, Web services manager at Henry Ford, who helped set up the live Twittering. Henry Ford, Ferris said, also is exploring Twitter as an educational tool, possibly for medical students and residents learning about specialized medical procedures.

And the Twittering is likely to undergo some tweaking in the future as it is adapted to new uses, Ferris said.

"We don't have it all figured out. We're evaluating it as we go," Ferris added.

You can reach Christina Rogers at (313) 222-2300 or cvrogers@detnews.com">cvrogers@detnews.com.