I love that medicine is always evolving. Artificial Intelligence isn’t going to be able to operate soon, but how can it help us have better surgeries and recoveries?
This was in the July 2023 issue of Aesthetic Surgery Journal. “Nanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence: an Emerging Paradigm for Postoperative Patient Care.”
Wow. That is a fancy title. So I read on. They talk about how an increasing number of plastic surgery procedures are done in ambulatory surgery centers (True. I do almost all of my surgeries in an outpatient surgicenter. It is a nicer experience, fully accredited, and lower risk of sick people/infections). They go on to state that postoperatively if we wanted to monitor these patients, they would have to get paid private duty nurses to look at vital signs, encourage getting out of bed and monitoring overall comfort.
But with new technology, we can follow a lot of these parameters.
Study:
- 23 patients after liposuction and fat grafting to the buttock
- SimpleSense was worn for more than 12 hours a day for the first 2 days. This is nanosensor technology in a wearable vest that monitors records and transmits physiologic data. It recorded ECG, thoracic impedance, respiration, heart sounds, posture, and actigraphy. You can log in non emergency symptoms or notes. You can set ranges on biomarkers (ie you heart rate should be between 60-90), or if your blood pressure changes by more than a certain amount. It can tell when you are lying down or up on your feet.
- Only 39% were compliant with postoperative positioning.
- No postoperative events were detected.
They concluded that the quality of data allows surgeons to detect issues in real time, prompting interventions such as drug administration, position changes, or if needed presentation to the Emergency Room. If heart rate and rhythm changes- why? Is it pain, anxiety, a pulmonary or fat embolism? If cardiac output changes, is the patient bleeding? PE? Fat embolism?
My thoughts?
I really like the idea of using “wearables” (which can look at heart rate, blood pressure, etc) to help monitor patients. Are you dehydrated? Pain too much? I think medicine is moving rapidly to more individualized care that is truly tailored to the individual. I think using this to help make surgery recovery better is fabulous. And heaven knows I want to GPS track my over active can’t sit still Bay Area patients after surgery, so when I tell them to relax and allow their body to heal, it would be great to see they haven’t hit their 10,000 steps for the day.
I understand why they did this study. Fat grafting to the buttock (aka Brazilian Butt Lift) has a lot of risk, so for them to see things like changes in vital signs sooner is ideal.
But I don’t think it is just for these more extreme cases. Anything we can do to improve your healing and comfort is great. As technology explodes in this area, we will have watches and monitors that can tell heart rate, heart rhythm, oxygen saturation, and even in the future bloodwork.
Heart rate up? Are you in pain? Anxious? Dehydrated? Bleeding? Do you have a fever?
Oxygen saturation lower? Take a deep breath to avoid atelectasis. Why is it low? Pain? Positioning? Pulmonary embolus?
I like the idea of all of this. I have focused a ton on diet and probiotics for my patients to optimize. I will be adding more to my toolbox, and I think some version of this will be in it.