A new multi-functional operating room table designed for cranial and upper-cervical intraoperative MR procedures is up and running in the IMRIS Surgical Theatre at Boston Children’s Hospital.

IMRIS and Hill-Rom announced the debut of their surgical asset this week at the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons Annual Scientific Meeting in New Orleans, calling it a solution for neurosurgeons who require an ergonomic, MR-conditional surgical table.

“Neurosurgeons, in many ways, are facing the challenge to leverage innovative technologies with conventional MR conditional surgical tables, simply due to the complexities of their patients and the transportation issues that can typically arise from different options,” Andrew Flanagan, president and CEO of IMRIS, told HCB News. “What we find, specifically, is that the neurosurgeons require more flexibility, especially in the presence of the modality we built in our theatre. We found that designing a table from the ground up with neurosurgeon needs explicitly in mind allows them to be more efficient in their workflow.”
Conventional imaging tables often require patients to be moved when performing preoperative or postoperative scans, putting them at risk of incurring infection due to leaving the sterile environment of a surgical site and expanding procedure time.

The table allows neurosurgeons to perform intraoperative imaging with the patient in the original surgical position, thereby minimizing the risk of infection and reducing operating times.

This furthers the efficiency of the suite of intraoperative imaging technology that makes up the IMRIS Surgical Theatre to enable neurosurgeons to observe essential anatomical details during operations without moving the patient from the table.

The table is composed of a new IMRIS MR neurosurgical tabletop that is integrated with and leverages Hill-Rom’s TruSystem 7500 OR Table platform, enhancing surgical performance for expanded applications to treat conditions such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

Surgical capabilities are further expanded by the multifunctional design of the TruSystem 7500, which allows for a wide range of interchangeable tabletops, enabling a broad range of procedures and multi-disciplinary uses to take place using one column. Its segmented design also offers optimal patient positioning.

Flanagan says the use of the table allows hospitals to maximize the value of their investment by offering neurosurgeons a more flexible workflow with reduced operation times and less required training.

“We will reduce the time it takes for the procedure from patient handling and imaging to the completion of the procedure, so it will be faster, due to flexibility of the technology. The availability to use follow-on and additional standard table configuration options when the theatre is not being used for neurosurgery will allow the IMRIS operating room to have an above-average utilization rate. With the human interface, I think the training requirement will be greatly reduced, compared to other options.”

The IMRIS Surgical Theatre is equipped with a moving, ceiling-mounted iMRI and iCT solution that delivers advanced imaging in the surgical environment, including intraoperative imaging.

The solution is now available for sale.

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