New O-Arm Imaging Technology Beneficial to Spine Patients

University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview recently became Minnesota's first hospital with new, three-dimensional imaging capabilities inside the operating room (OR) for spine surgeries.

The Breakaway Imaging O-arm, distributed by Medtronic Navigation, provides multi-dimensional, surgical imaging for complex spine surgeries. The new technology, available in only a few other hospitals in the nation, provides real-time, 3-D images in the operating room.

Installation, training and use of the technology began in October on the Medical Center's Riverside campus. The futuristic imaging technology provides two-dimensional fluoroscopy and 3-D imaging for spine surgeries quickly - in less than 30 seconds - that will allow surgeons greater precision in hardware placement and improve patient safety.

The O-arm is the next-generation technology advance of the C-arm, also used by spine surgeons at the medical center. The O-arm, however, provides more precise images onto a digital flat panel screen in the surgical suite. Its donut-shaped telescoping gantry allows for 360-degree imaging around the patient, making it highly beneficial for complicated spine cases.

"It provides intraoperative fluoroscopy through robotic technology, so it'll decrease fluoroscopy exposure time, and it allows you to do a diagnostic-quality intraoperative computed tomography (CT) scan," says David Polly, MD, medical director of the Spine Center at University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. "Instead of having to take a patient out of the OR and move him or her to a CT scanner to check the placement of an implant, we can do this intraoperatively and adjust things right at the time of surgery. This will, hopefully, decrease the number of times revisions need to be done and allow us to perform surgeries that are technically more demanding."

"Time and precision are critical in surgery," says Carly Deer, neurosciences services director. "By having this innovative technology, we're able to improve patient outcomes and patient safety for our more complicated spinal surgeries."

Nearly 700 spine surgeries were performed at the medical center in 2005. Polly expects that number to increase with the addition of a new neurosurgeon, Dennis Mollman, MD, a University of Minnesota Physicians specialist who focuses on complex spinal surgery. "There shouldn't be a spine-related surgical problem that we aren't able to tackle," says Polly. The Spine Center is known not only for general spine surgeries, but is also a referral center for tumor and deformity-related cases as well as previously operated spine cases.

The medical center is one of only six hospitals in the nation with an O-arm. Hospitals with O-arms closest to the medical center are located in Indiana and Nebraska.

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