New Operating Suites Bring Advanced Technology to Surgical Patients at Stanford
Monitors, lights and other devices in the operating rooms at the new Stanford Hospital will hang from the ceiling, allowing more room for the medical team, robots and portable equipment.
The three-acres of surgical floor space in the new Stanford Hospital were built to accommodate surgical advancements used today, and technologies yet to be invented. The space, known collectively as the interventional platform, includes 20 operating rooms and eight interventional/radiology rooms with fixed image-guidance, all co-located within a large sterile zone. The space includes two MRIs, one CT and one intra-operative MRI (iMRI).
At 800 to 1,000 square foot each, the new ORs are more than double the size of those in 300P. Overhead booms hoist lights, monitors and fixed equipment off the floors, freeing up floor space for movable medical equipment, robots and medical teams and trainees.
“Traditional operating rooms are giving way to interventional platforms that can support new techniques and technologies,” said George Tingwald, MD, AIA, Director of Medical Planning for the new hospital, who holds both an MD degree and an AIA designation as a professional architect. Tingwald, who is both surgeon and architect, brings a unique perspective to planning surgical suites.
In the new hospital, operating rooms, cardiac catheterization labs, angiography suites, endoscopy procedure rooms and imaging suites are grouped together into one integrated space. Physicians from multiple medical specialties—surgery, interventional imaging, angiography and cardiac catheterization—can work together side-by-side in these new facilities.
“The new ORs have the most advanced technology, making surgery more precise and safer,” said Mary Hawn, MD, MPH, FACS, Chair, Department of Surgery. “We will have the ability to route images to any screen in the room and view radiographic images alongside laparoscopic images.” New glare-reducing green lighting allows surgeons to see images clearly without plunging the OR into darkness.
Improving outcomes through increased efficiency
An adjacently-located iMRI allows patients to be scanned during surgery, and then returned to the OR with the images necessary to complete the procedure. Two copper-lined rooms provide radio-frequency shielding for procedures such as deep brain stimulation that require micro-electronic recordings of brain signals, without interference from nearby cell phone or equipment signals.
The hybrid operating and interventional suites are the most anticipated features of the new surgery center. Hybrid rooms merge the latest imaging, radiology and surgery platforms into one suite. Multi-stage procedures that were previously performed in separate locations and at separate times, can now be done within one scheduled procedure time and location.
For example, when a patient is having a brain tumor removed in one of the neuro-hybrid suites, surgeons can take in-suite iMRI images to confirm that they removed the entire tumor before closing the surgical site. In previous operating situations, surgeons had to complete the surgery without the certainty of the outcome and therefore faced the possibility of additional surgeries. Cardiac hybrid suites combine an OR with a catheterization lab, giving care teams the ability to do a minimally invasive cath procedure in conjunction with open-heart surgery.
The surgical floor has a convenient, centralized area for registration and family waiting, and a combined pre-operative and post-operative area for patients.
“The new operating rooms were designed to be flexible,” said Jennifer Romer, Senior Project Manager, Planning, Design + Construction. “Did we think of everything? Probably not. But we tried to provide the space, the technology and the power, data and gases necessary to incorporate new technologies as they become available.”