The Image Guided Surgery System offers surgeons critical information in cases of severe disease, in previously operated patients, and in patients with frontal sinus disease.
The Medical College of Wisconsin surgeons at Froedtert Hospital are using this new "STEALTH" technology that guides surgical instruments for potentially more accurate and effective sinus surgery. Because the new procedure is done through an endoscope inserted into the nose, an open incision is rarely necessary.
The new technology, image-guided surgery, is used during surgery for severe forms of chronic sinusitis, in cases when previous sinus surgery has altered anatomical landmarks, or where a patient's sinus anatomy is very unusual, making typical surgery difficult.
While complications of sinus surgery are very low, unusual nasal structures may put a patient at increased risk for complication. The guided surgery system may help to minimize such risks.
The patient population seen in the Medical College's Nasal and Sinus Disorder Program tends to have severe sinusitis and to have gone through multiple previous sinus surgeries that were not as successful as they had hoped. The image guidance system for close to 50% of the sinus surgeries that are performed by the sinus specialists.
Image guidance is a near-three-dimensional mapping system that combines computed tomography (CT) scans and real-time information about the exact position of surgical instruments using infrared signals. In this way, surgeons can navigate their way through complex sinus passages and provide surgical relief more precisely. Image guidance uses some of the same stealth principles used by the military to guide bombs to their target.