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?

Nurse Call System: Innovation In Place

Nurse Call System in operation

Thinking of a Nurse Call System at first thought might make you think that this post is useless because a nurse call system is as simple as a push button that is mounted near the patient and it will make a light, mounted above patient's door, glow up for a nurse on a nearby nurse station to come and see what the patient needs. Well, I am glad to tell you that this is old school nurse call system!

The nurse call system that I’d like to point out in my post here is a system that is so advanced that it almost feels so futuristic. As you can imagine with me, the system will decide based on data coming from different medical equipment monitoring the patient what kind of alert to be triggered and to which doctors or nurses to send this alert to. Important data will be sent via a wireless connection to a tablet or a Smartphone that will inform the doctor or nurse with specific details of the patient’s condition. Such a nurse call system would be very useful to hospitals in saving patient lives; moreover, it will decrease the probability of a patient dying due to misinformed alarm etc

How such Nurse Call system works?

Cyberknife: A Robotic Treatment for Cancer

There are many cancer treatments nowadays but most of them are rather dangerous to apply to patients as chemotherapy is one of the most destructive treatments that there is for cancer. Other treatments are invasive and include much risk to patient health and safety with the need for operation and cutting the tumor area and to hope for the best.

Cyberknife: A Medical Robot

Then came two revolutionary solutions one of them is the introduction for the CT or MRI in operating rooms to be able to see if the surgery is successful or not before finishing the surgery and this is good and we already took this topic into our account and made two posts about such a great solution for cancer, but wait should cancer be treated by surgery? This answer is no longer a straight yes how is that?

Well, thanks to the cyberknife, though it is called a “Knife” but don’t worry this name is just to add some glamor to the machine but in fact, it is a totally noninvasive technology that uses a robotic radiosurgery system. This system is designed to focus radioactivity to tumor cells only and to exclude healthy cells that are around tumor cells.

All You Need-to-Know About Electro-Surgical Units

What is the Electrosurgical unit? 

An Electro Surgical Unit makes use of radiofrequency electrical current to cut, coagulate or destroy tissue. An electrosurgical unit is an instrument used in surgeries, where a high-frequency electric current is used to cut and coagulate tissues. 

During surgery, there is significant blood loss as the tissues and blood vessels are cut resulting in bleeding. Thus the use of an electrosurgical unit reduces bleeding and loss of blood. 

ESU circuit design is made to provide the correct electrical waveforms to be delivered to the site of surgery to coagulate blood vessels thus cutting tissues in a safe and smooth manner. A Surgeon may use the electrosurgery unit instead of, or in addition to a conventional scalpel. 

When used properly, the electrosurgical unit has a less damaging effect on tissues than that of a scalpel and allows for a safe way to stop bleeding. 

These electrosurgical equipment uses an electric current of an oscillating frequency of nearly 500 kHz to cut and coagulate tissues. When the electrical current is passed through the tissue, it gets heated up resulting in water evaporation which ultimately destroys cells. Thus, the process of cutting, clotting, dehydrating blood cells and tissues is achieved with minimal blood loss.

An alternating current enters into the patient’s that is part of the closed circuit consisting of a generator, an active electrode, patient, and the patient's return electrode.

Maintaining an ECG Machine

Maintaining an ECG machine

It is common sense to apply all preventive maintenance procedures that are recommended by the manufacturer.


Also, if your machines are not under a contract of service by the supplier. It is highly recommended that you have a service manual that will help you pinpoint machine defects and solutions of such defects. Sometimes it is also a good idea to try to contact the supplier about a certain defect that is not mentioned in the service manual. In addition, there are some parts of any machine that might have recurring defects, in this case, try to have a spare part for any urgent cases.


If you have more than 5 ECG machines then it is also recommended that you have spare batteries, thermal heads, ECG leads, etc. Depending on the numbers of ECG machines you have and based on the expected life of such parts.

iCT: Another Vital Addition to OR

iCT in Operation Room 

 Just like iMRI, iCT is also imperative and is a very useful tool in driving better success in operation rooms, this kind of operation room is going to be the future of conventional operating rooms, surgeons are now able to see the outcome of their surgery during surgery time thus increasing chances of success and reducing any further implications.

Also, even with its high price, many hospitals from around the world are opting to have such technology on their hands to increase their medical care services to a much needed sector in medical field, which is the operation room, this gives these hospitals an advantage over others for curing brain, spine and trauma surgeries.

How iCT works?

iMRI: A New Era to Operation Rooms

iMRI Operation Room

iMRI is Intra-operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging, this means that MRI high-resolution images are being taken during surgery and thus the iMRI will be placed in an operation room. The operation room that contains an iMRI is often called hybrid operation room and is a new expression used to define this new emerging and needed specialized non-conventional operation rooms.

               Why iMRI so important?

It is far more important it is more like a need to neurosurgeons as with the aid of iMRI they will be able “to create accurate pictures of the brain that guide them in removing brain tumors and other abnormalities during operations.” from myoclinic.org. These high resolution pictures will reduce the need for other future operation on the patient as it will aid surgeons to remove all the tumors in the same surgery as they can see the tumor during the surgery, thus raising chances of success of a surgery and at the same time reducing multi surgery risk on the same patient.