A PVR screening a livestream of a surgery being performed at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi
(Photo courtesy: Dr Sudhir Kalhan Chairman Institute of Minimal Access, Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery Sir Ganga Ram Hospital)
PVR-Chanakyapuri in Delhi had a screening like never before on Monday, 12 September. This was no ordinary movie, and the audience was not made up of your regular movie buffs.
From 8 am to 6 pm, one of the screens in the cinema hall played livestreams of surgeries being performed in another part of the city – at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
A close-up view of the projection of a laparoscopic hernia operation being performed.
This ambitious programme was the brainchild of Dr Sudhir Kalhan MS, chairman of the Institute of Minimal Access, Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. FIT caught up with him to find out how his team pulled it off.
Speaking to FIT, Dr Sudhir Kalhan said that the main motivation behind attempting something like this was his desire to be able to train more doctors at once.
Dr Kalhan explains, "What I do is laparoscopy, where I put a small stereoscope with a camera inside the patient, and then I see everything on the screen and I operate."
Because of modern technological advancements, this footage on the screen can now be viewed in 3D 4K with accurate depth perception.
"We have a lot of young surgeons, many are from outside, from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka; they come here for training in advanced surgery," he says, adding, "Normally, if someone comes to my operation theatre, I can show three, four, five people, and there are many who want to learn."
The surgeries were screened in a cinema hall in Delhi.
Dr Kalhan says he has been wanting to do something like this for a while now.
Dr Kalhan explains that he reached out to the owner of PVR cinema halls in Delhi because they already had the infrastructure for screening 3D movies.
Dr Sudhir Kalhan in the operation theatre at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
He adds that his team has been getting good feedback from his colleagues since the screening. "We're getting messages from everywhere saying they want to do something like this too."
"It's so convenient that you are operating in your hospital and people are able to watch it in the comfort of a cinema hall. The technology is good, the vision is good, the interaction is good," he adds.
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