Hybrid OR the New Operation Room

Translational Hybrid OR

Operating rooms in hospitals are one of the most congested rooms with different medical equipment and though it seems that there is no room for more medical equipment, there is definitely a need for more equipment so that surgeons able to increase their operation success rate and to increase patient medical care in total. 

So what can be done to solve this dilemma? 

The solution is simple and bold, there is no compromise against reducing medical equipment and this lead to the best suitable result which is “Hybrid Rooms”, and so now what are hybrid operation rooms?

Hybrid rooms are the answer to the fact that operation rooms can no longer be able to hold the numerous and various medical equipment, so making a dedicated operating room that is specialized in specific procedures is the answer. So now hospitals can have these hybrid rooms where one can be dedicated to spinal surgeries and the second room dedicated to open heart surgeries and a third room to be dedicated for catheterization and so on and so forth. So now instead of seeing 10 typical rooms in a hospital, it will be better than each room was specialized in certain surgeries and contains the medical equipment needed to provide best practices and best quality in patient care.

This means that in a hybrid room you may find an iMRI, iCT or a C-arm etc where now the surgeon will be able to see the results of his operation live on high-resolution screens just in front of him. In this way, best results are almost guaranteed compared to the era where the doctor and the patient had to wait for after the surgery to know if the surgery is successful or not. Now with hybrid operation rooms, there is no longer a need for such stressful situations and this leads a reduced number of surgeries and its physical and psychological implications. St. Joseph Hospital was one of the first hospitals that implemented true hybrid operating rooms and have a positive experience with such integrated ideas.

Hybrid Operation Room

What is great about this concept is that in many cases customizing operation rooms can be done without any implications on building architecture, and the process is done in a relatively fast and effective way. For more in-depth info about hybrid operating rooms, you are recommended to read “The hybrid Operating Room” by Georg Nollert, Thomas Hartkens, Anne Figel, Clemens Bulitta, Franziska Altenbeck and Vanessa Gerhard. If you are willing to see some statistics that are simple yet informative you might want to read about “Hybrid Operating Rooms: With the Focus on Endovascular Hybrid ORs“. Whereas if you are inclined to see what needs to be done to have a Hybrid OR in your Hospital or facility then you might consider reading “Operating Rooms Design Manual”. Furthermore, you might want to take a look at Go Hybrid page in Siemens health website to have more in-depth info on the subject.