Surgery

Surgeons were quick to consider using the newly discovered X-rays in the operating theater. However, some technological developments were required before X-rays could become established there. Today, it is impossible to imagine vascular, cardiac, thoracic, or neurosurgery, abdominal, orthopedic, trauma, or spine surgery without image-guided interventions and direct surgical control.

Intraoperative 3D imaging in orthopedic and trauma surgery helps position implants and screws more accurately and to optimally reposition bone fragments, while also reducing complications and costly revision surgery.

A hybrid operating room is at the heart of the new operating and intensive care center of the LKH-Feldkirch, Austria, a specialist care hospital. Building the hybrid OR was a farsighted decision – in a very literal sense.

It wasn’t long before surgeons began experimenting with the use of X-rays during operations. In 1897, for example, the Frankfurt physician Gustav Spiess described an operation in which he opened a patient’s frontal sinus via their nose and tracked the movements of his drill “on the [fluorescent] screen at every moment.” Nevertheless, it would be decades before X-rays became a fully established tool in the operating room.