Preliminary Result in Endoscopic Video Assisted Breast Surgery

Background : The development of technology has grown rapidly in surgical science, especially the use of endoscopy to develop operations in producing minimal scar tissue. Endoscopic VABS is a surgical technique and began to develop since 1995. The technique has several approaches, namely through the chest wall, mammary and axilla. The descriptive study aims to report our first experience in the management of benign breast tumors with Endoscopic Video Assisted Breast Surgery. Methods : Ten patients with benign breast tumor have performed Endoscopic VABS in the period March 2017 to September 2017 at the Hospital in Surakarta. The largest diameter at the nodule, duration of operation, length of postoperative care, postoperative pain, cosmetic outcomes and complications were observed retrospectively. Result : All patients are women with median age 28 years. The largest diameter that can be taken is 3.5 cm with median 2 cm. One patient performed the conversion into a lumpectomy with conventional techniques due to difficult dissection and uncontrolled bleeding. The median duration of surgery was 60 minute with an average length of treatment for 2 days postoperatively. Average VAS Score was 4. No postoperative complications were found. But cosmetically, all patients are satisfied with the results of surgical wounds. Conclusion : The VABS endoscopic procedure is safe and effective procedure and has excellent cosmetic benefits because it does not show scar tissue in the breast area. This VABS Endoscopic technique has a weakness in terms of longer duration of operation compared to conventional techniques, but this can be overcome with the expertise and experience of the operator.

Partial 3D-reconstruction of the colon from monoscopic colonoscopy videos using shape-from-motion and deep learning

For the image-based documentation of a colonoscopy procedure, a 3D-reconstuction of the hollow colon structure from endoscopic video streams is desirable. To obtain this reconstruction, 3D information about the colon has to be extracted from monocular colonoscopy image sequences. This information can be provided by estimating depth through shape-from-motion approaches, using the image information from two successive image frames and the exact knowledge of their disparity. Nevertheless, during a standard colonoscopy the spatial offset between successive frames is continuously changing. Thus, in this work deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are applied in order to obtain piecewise depth maps and point clouds of the colon. These pieces can then be fused for a partial 3D reconstruction.

Fluorescence diagnostics and photodynamic therapy of squamous cell carcinoma of the lateral surface of the tongue using the photosensitizer chlorin e6 by spectroscopic video fluorescence methods

This paper presents the results of using intraoperative fluorescence diagnostics (FD) with the endoscopic video system to increase the efficiency of photodynamic therapy (PDT). The molecular form of chlorin e6 was used as a photosensitizer (PS). All patients received an intravenous administration drug based on chlorin e6 at the concentration of 1 mg/kg. Diagnostics and therapy were carried out in 4 patients diagnosed by malignant neoplasms of the lateral surface of the tongue. Determination of the boundaries by changing the signal of the fluorescence intensity of the tumor was carried out before PDT and after PDT. The efficiency of PDT was assessed by the fluorescent signal of the tumor decreasing when compared with non-pathological normal tissue. The FD method allows to determine accurately the actual size of the tumor and its borders. All patients underwent PDT influenced by the therapeutic laser with a generation wavelength of 660 nm. It is shown that the using of fluorescence diagnostics improves the quality of the photodynamic therapy, since it is possible to assess the photobleaching of the drug during the operation.

Alleviating Paravertebral Muscle Spasm after Radiofrequency Ablation Treatment of Hypersensitive Basivertebral and Sinuvertebral Nerves for Chronic Discogenic Back Pain

BACKGROUND: Paraspinal muscle spasm caused by pain from a lumbar degenerative disc is frequently investigated in patients with low back pain. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) surgery could alleviate paraspinal muscle spasms. OBJECTIVES: We performed RFA surgery on the high-intensity zone (HIZ) and hypersensitive sinuvertebral and basivertebral nerves to evaluate its outcome. The paravertebral muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) was measured on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) before and after surgery to evaluate the effect of RFA surgery on the paravertebral muscle. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: A single spine surgery center. METHODS: A comparative study was performed on 2 different uniportal spinal endoscopic surgery groups; 23 patients who underwent RFA surgery for chronic discogenic back pain and 45 patients who underwent posterior decompression surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis with 12 months of follow-up. Paravertebral muscle cross-sectional area, Schiza grade, Modic type, and HIZ size were measured on pre- and post-operative MRI. An endoscopic video review was performed to evaluate the presence of intraoperative twitching and grade the degree of epidural neovascularization and adhesion. Visual analog scale VAS, modified Oswestry Disability Index, ODI and MacNab’s criteria were evaluated for outcome measures. RESULTS: Intraoperative endoscopic video evaluation showed neovascularization and adhesion adjacent to the disc and pedicle. In the RFA surgery group, there were 7 patients (30.43%) with grade 2 and 16 (69.57%) with grade 3 neovascularization; intraoperative twitching was observed in 19 out of 23 patients (82.61%). After performing an RFA on the sinuvertebral and basivertebral nerves for the treatment of discogenic back pain, the results showed significant improvement in pain and disability scores. The mean CSA of the paraspinal muscle in the RFA surgery group was significantly increased after surgery at the L4–L5 and L5–S1 levels (L4–L5: 3901 ± 1096.7 mm² to 4167 ± 1052.1 mm², P = 0.000; L5-S1: 3059 ± 968.5 mm² to 3323 ± 1046.2 mm², P = 0.000) compared to preoperative CSA. LIMITATIONS: This study was limited by its small sample size. CONCLUSION: Hypersensitive sinuvertebral and basivertebral nerves are strongly associated with epidural neovascularization with adhesion and the pathological pain pathway in degenerative disc disease. Epidural neovascularization with adhesion reflects aberrant neurological connections, which are associated with reflex inhibitory mechanisms of the multifidus muscle, which induces spasm. RFA treatment of the region of epidural neovascularization with adhesion effectively treated chronic discogenic back pain and could induce paraspinal muscle spasm release. KEY WORDS: Discogenic back pain, high-intensity zone, sinuvertebral nerve, basivertebral nerve, radiofrequency ablation, multifidus muscle

Trans-septal quilting suture versus intranasal silicone splint for preventing complications post endoscopic septoplasty

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Septoplasty is a common procedure in the field of otolaryngology for treatment of septal deviations. Intranasal splints and trans-septal quilting suture are commonly utilized to prevent post-operative complications. The silicone splint is a quick and simple technique to aid in cartilage support; however, it can cause discomfort. Trans-septal quilting suture is more available, well-tolerated and can help in mucosal tear closure, though is time-consuming. This study aimed to compare the efficacy of intranasal silicone splints versus quilting suture in the prevention of post endoscopic septoplasty complications.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> This was a retrospective COHORT study comprised of patients who underwent endoscopic septoplasty between January 2017 and December 2019 at Qatif central hospital. The patients were assigned into two groups: group S, who received intranasal splints and group Q, who received trans-septal quilting suturing. Patients’ medical records were reviewed for evaluation of post-operative visits and post-operative nasal endoscopic video recordings from the image archive software were evaluated to document complications. Statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS 23.0 software.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> The study included 65 patients, of whom 41 were in group S and 24 were in group Q. None of the patients had major bleeding, local infection or mucosal synechia. There was a higher complication rate in terms of mucosal crustation, septal hematoma and perforation among group S; however, the difference was not statistically significant.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Conclusions:</strong> We conclude that trans-septal quilting suture and intranasal silicone splints are both equally effective in preventing complications following septoplasty.</p>

Simulation-to-real domain adaptation with teacher–student learning for endoscopic instrument segmentation

Purpose Segmentation of surgical instruments in endoscopic video streams is essential for automated surgical scene understanding and process modeling. However, relying on fully supervised deep learning for this task is challenging because manual annotation occupies valuable time of the clinical experts. Methods We introduce a teacher–student learning approach that learns jointly from annotated simulation data and unlabeled real data to tackle the challenges in simulation-to-real unsupervised domain adaptation for endoscopic image segmentation. Results Empirical results on three datasets highlight the effectiveness of the proposed framework over current approaches for the endoscopic instrument segmentation task. Additionally, we provide analysis of major factors affecting the performance on all datasets to highlight the strengths and failure modes of our approach. Conclusions We show that our proposed approach can successfully exploit the unlabeled real endoscopic video frames and improve generalization performance over pure simulation-based training and the previous state-of-the-art. This takes us one step closer to effective segmentation of surgical instrument in the annotation scarce setting.