UT Health Tyler is first in world to use Brainlab Loop-X technology on awake DBS patient
Published 5:25 am Wednesday, August 30, 2023
UT Health East Texas in Tyler is the first hospital in the world to use Brainlab Loop-X technology to perform deep brain stimulation surgery on an awake patient, according to Kevin Chiu, marketing manager North America and functional and stereotactic neurosurgery at Brainlab.
Since acquiring the technology, there have been 35 surgeries as of early August. Most of these surgeries have been spinal surgeries. However they are exploring other departments where the technology can be used according to Paul Detwiler, neurosurgeon at UT Health East Texas.
The technology helps in spinal surgeries because it is more precise. It has a robotic arm and scanner. The robotic arm helps with placing the position. The scanner is used after surgery to make sure the incisions are correct. They can compare images to successful surgeries. This saves time after because the patient no longer needs to come back the next day to get an X-ray, according to Detwiler.
“When you walk into an operating room and see a robotic arm, that creates trepidation with people,” Detwiler said. “This particular robotic arm does not move on its own. The only way this robot can move is if I disengage it and move it into position and lock it. So this robot really isn’t doing anything. It’s a very sophisticated angulation device that shows where we are in three dimensions and allows us to pass a number of instruments down through it, but it doesn’t do anything on its own.”
The Loop-X suite was acquired by the hospital for $1.5 million after the hospital realized there was a need to replace some older technology. This technology helps keep patients local, according to Jimmy Clark, vice president of operations at UT Health.
“We weren’t able to care for them here and had to ship them either to Dallas or to Houston,” Clark said. “And so at the request of our physicians, we went ahead and invested in the Loop X technology and are now able to provide care for those patients close to home here in Tyler.”
The technology will also help in training medical residents as they can get anatomical training and observe.
“When I trained 20 to 23 years ago, we didn’t have image guidance,” Detwiler said. “It was all based on your ability to conceptualize three dimensional anatomy.”