Google Glass in the OR: Not ready for prime time

The Royal London Hospital and the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry presented the first live-streamed surgical procedure in the UK. The operation was an extended right hemicolectomy with resection of a metastatic liver lesion.

I was able to view the entire broadcast portion of the surgery live, and you can see it if you click  [2/27/15 Addendum: The link to the video has been taken down. Sorry.]

Here is what I thought about the event.

Televised live surgery: Would you want to be the patient?

"Defibrillation, defibrillation, where is the defibrillator? We did a mistake while talking," said a cardiologist when a patient went into ventricular fibrillation during a live broadcast of a percutaneous coronary intervention at a meeting in Europe last year.

Before it was recognized by the operators, the complication was identified by members of a panel and an audience who were watching the procedure remotely.

The Medscape article with a link to the video of the procedure is available here.

Live broadcasting of procedures—is it really educational; is it just self-promotion; is it marketing?

Several societies have published guidelines for live broadcasts of operations and procedures, and some papers have discussed the ethics of the practice. I won't get into those areas.

Here are some things to consider.