Schools
Dayton Students Watch Live Brain Surgery
Dayton Seniors View a Live Brain Tumor Removal Surgery via Twitter
students got a unique insight into brain surgery this week when they watched a live Twittercast and YouTube videos of a brain surgery in real time on cellphones and a teacher's laptop.
On May 9 at 9:45 a.m., a 21-year-old female patient went into surgery to have a brain tumor removed from the left side of her brain. The hospital, Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, documented process of the surgery on their official Twitter account for their over 12,000 followers. The surgery was performed by Dr. Dong Kim, who performed the brain surgery that saved the life of Gabrielle Giffords. Brain tumor specialist Dr. Scott Shepard was in the operating room to answer questions about the procedure.
Seniors in Mrs. Irene Ornovitz's Anatomy and Physiology class put their knowledge of the human brain to the test, asking doctors questions about how the structures could be damaged, complications, the reason for surgery and more.
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Brett Biebelberg, a fellow Patch contributor, asked, "How does this surgery compare to that performed on Gabby Giffords?" and "How will you get to the site of the tumor without damaging blood vessels?"
I asked, "Do you have to sterilize the iPhone use for tweeting during the surgery?" Dr. Shepard responded that "All technical equipment is cleaned on the surface but can't be fully sterilized."
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Aubrey Marcantonio even snapped a few candid shots of the class watching the surgery Twittercast and "tweeted" them to doctors.
Unfortunately, the students were not able to keep up with the educational and innovative procedure on their own after class. The school provided laptops "blocked" the educational, real time videos on YouTube and the procedure related "tweets" on Twitter. It was certainly a disappoint to all of the students when they couldn't watch this groundbreaking event at the end of class.
The surgery was a great way for students to see how relevant the material they were learning was to the real world. One could not ask for a more perfect companion to an Anatomy and Physiology class.
