In a first, doctors have used the eye-wearable device Google Glass to successfully restore the blood flow of a chronically block-ed right coronary artery in a 49-year-old patient.
In a first, doctors have used the eye-wearable device Google Glass to successfully restore the blood flow of a chronically block-ed right coronary artery in a 49-year-old patient.
Virtual reality (VR) has potential to revolutionise some aspects of medicine and healthcare, researchers said. A group of cardiologists has now successfully used a VR device to guide the opening up (revascularisation) of a chronically blocked right coronary artery. Chronic total occlusion, a complete blockage of the coronary artery, sometimes referred to as the “final frontier in interventional cardiology,” represents a major challenge for catheter-based percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) is increasingly used to provide physicians with guidance when performing PCI in lesions. The occluded coronary segment and the distal vessel territory are often more clearly depicted using coronary CTA than in invasive angiography.
The procedure itself can be facilitated by projection of 3D CTA data sets on separate monitors in the catheterisation laboratory, but this technique is constrained by economic and technical factors. Cardiologists from the Institute of Cardiology in Poland were able to successfully restore blood flow in the occluded right coronary artery of a 49-year-old male patient assisted by CTA projections in a wearable VR device based on Google Glass, with an optical head-mounted display.
The display of 3D computed tomographic reconstructions in a mobile application equipped with a hands-free voice recognition system and a zoom function, enabled the physician-operators to clearly visualise the distal coronary vessel.
