The OR Times
Week of 12/15/2019
Welcome to the OR Times! This forum will discuss several hot topics in surgery, and how we may be able to assist with all kinds of growing problems. I’m a professional technical consultant for a plethora of medical devices, and can provide real OR insight as to how pre-op products can totally change the trajectory of success of surgery. I will be writing a post weekly, however there may be an occasional relevant article or story provided by a different author.
For my first article I want to address incomplete fractures and osteochondral deformities of weight bearing bones/joints on canine patients. One of the many complications that can arise during these surgeries is blood loss- specifically in trauma cases; the more time during surgery, the more chances there are for blood loss and likelihood of a blood transfusion. These issues only put more stress on the surgeons, increased OR time, higher infection rate, and increased cost for the owners of the animals.
What can be done to prevent this is either:
- new and expensive instrumentation/video
- detail oriented pre-op models
There is obviously plenty of evidence of the benefit of new instrumentation and technology, but it can be very expensive. Where pre-op models can prove their worth is in their cost-effective nature and practicality. For example, a specific canine case in 2017.
The above model was used for making practice cuts pre-surgery, and later used as a visual aid during the difficult surgery. The young dog had a distal femoral deformation which lead to patellar subluxation. The surgeon provided CT scans of the dog, Med Dimensions isolated and converted the femur into a 3D printable STL file. Once the femur model was printed, it was provided to the surgeon, who used the model in pre-op strategy and as a reference point during the surgery. The use of this model lead to a solution for all of the problems I mentioned in the second paragraph for this specific case.
A femoral plate put into this patient 
X-ray image post-op 
Patient post-op
This is just one example of how I’ve seen these models be beneficial before, during, and after surgery. I’m looking forward to sharing more of these seemingly endless success stories with you! Please leave a comment if you have any questions, and reach out to me at [email protected] if there is anything you’d like me to cover!
-Fred