Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Broadcast Surgeries

Slate has an article explaining that with the coming of laparoscopic surgery it's very easy to broadcast surgeries live. With the old-fashioned open wound surgeries, all the hands got in the way of the camera, but with laparoscopy you just copy the feed from the camera and instruments and blast it across the web.

The article emphasizes the entertainment value because apparently such broadcasts are de rigeur at medical conferences. And they're done live, not on DVD, because it's more grabby.

There's little discussion of education, but there must be a lot of that going on in med schools. Remembering shows like St. Elsewhere (with a young Denzel) using DVD's of laparoscopic procedures have got to improve education productivity by a lot, a whole lot.

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