Heart surgery simulator arrives in SA

By Siyabonga Africa, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 18 Feb 2009

Medtronic has unveiled the Bakken Education Centre and a virtual catheterisation laboratory (VCL), which will be housed at its headquarters in Bedfordview, Johannesburg.

Medtronic product manager Rebecca Lai says the VCL is the only one of its kind in Africa and is one of 35 spread around the world, at 19 training stations.

A Medtronic statement says the VCL is designed to provide training in implantable devices, such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, cardiac resynchronisation therapy devices and coronary stents.

“The VCL was developed by Medtronic, in conjunction with Immersion Medical, in the US, who created the haptics technology to make the simulator more real,” explains Lai. “Currently, the simulator has 70% feedback quality.”

The simulator is a combination of a C-Arm scanner, a human dummy fitted with apparatus and software loaded with a number of cases to test the user. Lai adds that a number of the test cases used in the simulator were taken from real-life scenarios. The heart X-rays and MRI scans of the patients were copied and digitised into 3D images and animations that are included in the software for the simulator.

“The VCL offers real-time cardiovascular scenarios where the differentiating factor is the speed of which the user completes the procedures,” says Lai.

Training for all

Medtronics regional director Mike Howe-Ely says the company hopes to provide training to cardiology students as a means of increasing the skills base in the field and working professionals who want to brush up or develop new procedures.

“Cardiology is a very limited field in SA,” explains Howe-Ely. “There are fewer than 150 cardiologists in the country and, at any given stage, there are 30 registrars in university.”

The training centre will also bring in cardiologists from the rest of the African continent to be trained by the experts and academics who will run the training centre, he notes.

“Local doctors will benefit by not having to pay for flights to our other training centre in Switzerland and lose valuable working hours as well,” Howe-Ely adds.

Health minister Barbara Hogan says she is astonished and happy that training with the VCL is being offered free to cardiologists in this country. “I am sure many developing countries around the world are jealous of what Medtronic is providing for us,” she says.