Development of the Surgery Recorder System

An important concept of the Surgery Recorder System (SRS) for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is proposed. With wide spread of public interest in rapid recovery from surgical diseases, MIS has been increasing the number of clinical cases. Then the risk of clinical accidents will also be raised for a reason that shortage in supply of standard clinical treatments will lead to complications or mortal cases associated with misjudgments of surgeons. Actually, specific accidents in MIS have been increasing, but there is no efficient methodology of quantitative analysis for accidents, even the standard format for surgical record including operative procedure. Therefore, we developed SRS, which give clinical review process an objective way of identifying the causes of accidents. SRS is meant to be the "flight recorder" in the operating theater. SRS records surgery information including position/orientation (P/O) and force/torque (F/T) signals of surgical tools, an endoscopic vision and surrounding sounds in the operating theater (A/V information). A prototype of laparoscopic forceps for P/O and F/T sensing was newly developed with care for consistency with commercial forceps. Then, in-vivo pig experiments were also performed by an expert of laparoscopic surgery for testing SRS. False and rough operative approaches to diaphragma and liver by a skillful surgeon were analyzed quantitatively in a postoperative investigation.