VIDEO DOCUMENTATION IN A CARDIAC SURGERY DEPARTMENT:

INTEGRATION, DATA MANAGEMENT AND USE

Thomas Breymann¹, Marc M. Batschkus²*;¹Department of Surgery for Congenital Heart Disease, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, D-30625 Hannover, GERMANY, ²Archiware GmbH, Sonnenstr.27, D-80331 Muenchen, GERMANY.

PURPOSE: Heart surgery is difficult to teach, learn and document. Images only convey some of the information. Videos of operational procedures provide improved means for surgical training, documentation and research. Integration of video documentation results in one central question: How to balance cost and effort with the outcome?

METHODS: Routine video documentation was integrated in a cardiac OR. A restricted metadata set was defined. A workflow was developed to capture, edit and file videos. Platform independent archiving was chosen to allow for maximum flexibility in training and teaching. Scalability and usability of the data management software were considered important for the long-term outcome.

RESULTS: Restricting the effort for the surgeon and personnel is crucial. Recording, processing and editing need to be streamlined and options limited. Cross platform access including search options and visual browsing were key points in routine use. After only two years the generated data is unique in scope and comprehensiveness. Discussion about techniques and details was stimulated. Ideas for future uses and scientific perspectives were enhanced. Surgical training was improved tremendously through the use of video files and the archive.

CONCLUSION/FUTURE DIRECTIONS: Routine video documentation in the cardiac OR is more than justified by the resulting data and the multiple scenarios for their usage. The use of HD-video format increases the quality dramatically and is scheduled for this year. Experimental efforts were undertaken to work with 3D reconstruction of two HD-video sources. This remains a research scenario since resulting data sets are of tremendous size.