[...] thoracic surgeon who are not aware of this information and give serious consideration for learning these techniques are "missing the boat"
Grifith Pearson, 2011.
The riverside boy had heard talk that the sea existed, elsewhere. To reach it would take days and days of rowing and walking. Instinctively, the boy wanted to know it. Three friends who build dreams were willing to take him. It took six days - two leagues per day - until they reached the foot of the high dunes. One more day was still needed.
When they reached the summit, the sea presented itself to his eyes. There was so much immensity, so much immersion, and so much brilliance, that the boy became mute and pale. When he finally regained his color, he managed to babble. Trembling, stuttering, he asked his friends: — My eyes cannot handle it, help me to see!
The paragraph was inspired by Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer. The ideology walks step by step with lung surgeons: seeking the immensity of segmentectomies - and their developments. It is indicated for peripheral cancerous nodules (< 2cm) with the aim of cure. In them, less lung is removed without affecting the oncological result, when compared to larger resections. The goal is to reduce the effects on respiratory capacity compared to more extensive surgeries.
Allied to this search is Mixed Reality (MR), which flows into a sea of technology that has been flooding the surgeon's mind, causing an overwhelming rearrangement in mental connections. It reminds us of children, smiling, running after Pokémon on smartphone screens, in public squares, to form their virtual army and fight other virtual armies of real friends.
The fact is that, conceptually, the virtual world creates completely immersive digital environments. That's the key word. MR is what mixes virtual imagery with real content through superimposition. The transformation occurs when putting on the glasses. It's a dive into human anatomy never navigated before.
The glasses are essential tools for this immersion. As they are bulky, when placed on your face you end up looking strange, with random hand movements, resembling someone gesticulating alone on the sidewalk. But inside the glasses, the brain transforms. There is an overlay of virtual anatomy onto the real field of the operated patient, giving the surgeon the ability to evaluate morphological details during the operation. This prevents possible anatomical distortions.
It is known: the more peripheral the pulmonary dissection, the greater the anatomical variation. The glasses come in deciphering such alterations to remove errors and seek perfection. It's like swimming inside an anatomy book in a three-dimensional field..
One of the most used literary sources to make this anatomy compatible is "Illustrated Anatomical Segmentectomy for Lung Cancer," by Nomori & Okada, Japaneses. The book demonstrates the percentage of various broncho-vascular variations that, combined with MR, facilitate dissection. The book's plates are very didactic. It even has a preface by Griffith Pearson. It's a masterpiece. Recently, several have emerged with the addition of virtual technology and maximum immersion. It's a path of no return.
Another classic is "Segmental Anatomy of the Lungs," by Edward Boyden – the same one from the Boyden trunk. A gift from Professor Jesse Teixeira. In it, one realizes how complex anatomical variations are, with minute details to the point of making the reading heavy. It's more directed to anatomists
The boy went down to the seashore, and from there threw his bottle, confiscating his ignorance mixed with his etceteras and such. It was the way he found for the enlightenment to respond to what words could not say. He left on the bottle's label: "I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle," which the English group The Police claims to be of their authorship.
Roger Normando
Brazilian Thoracic Surgeon
Universidade Federal do Pará