It’s 7 a.m. at Henry Ford Hospital, and surgeons are preparing to remove a cancerous tumor from a man’s kidney. It’s potentially a risky surgery, but everything’s ready: The doctors and nurses are in the operating room, the surgical instruments are sterilized and ready to go, and the chief resident is furiously Twittering on his laptop. That’s right — last week, for the second known time, surgeons Twittered a surgery by using social-networking site Twitter to give short real-time updates about the procedure. Following the February 9 operation online were other doctors, medical students and the merely curious. “Here’s something different: HenryFordNews is live tweeting surgery today, getting some buzz, too,” wrote one Twitter participant from Massachusetts. “I find this fascinating!” tweeted another Twitter user from Swansea, United Kingdom. “It’s an interesting use of technology, but I can’t help but feel a bit ‘eeewww!’ about this,” wrote a third tweeter from New York. Whether it’s new and cool or merely yicky, observers say there’s no question that more and more doctors — and patients — will be sharing the blow-by-blow of medical procedures on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Dr. Craig Rogers, the lead surgeon in the Henry Ford surgery, said the impetus for his Twittering was to let people know that a tumor can be removed without taking the entire kidney. “We’re trying to use this as a way to get the word out,” Rogers said.
Please click on the link below to read the complete CNN article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/17/twitter.surgery/index.html
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