Virtual surgery shows promise in personalized treatment of nasal obstruction

A preliminary report suggests that virtual nasal surgery has the potential to be a productive tool that may enable surgeons to perform personalized nasal surgery using computer simulation techniques, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the September print issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Nasal obstruction is usually caused by a deviated septum (a condition in which the partition between the two sides of the nose is off-center or crooked, making breathing difficult), or by enlarged tissues (turbinates) within the nose. Two surgical procedures commonly performed by otolaryngologists are septoplasty (an operation to correct the deformity in the septum) and turbinate surgery.

"With the availability of powerful bioengineering computer-aided design software, anatomically accurate three-dimensional (3D) computational models can now be generated from computed tomography (CT) or (MRI) data," the authors write as background information in the article. "Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software can be used to analyze these models and calculate various anatomic and physiologic measures including nasal airflow, resistance, air conditioning, and wall shear stress."

John S. Rhee, M.D., M.P.H., of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues evaluated whether virtual surgery performed on three-dimensional nasal airway models can predict post-surgical biophysical parameters obtained by . The researchers used pre- and post-surgery CT scans of a patient undergoing septoplasty and right inferior turbinate reduction (ITR) to generate 3D models of the nasal airway.

"Overall, the virtual surgery results are promising and demonstrate the potential of CFD techniques to predict post-surgical outcomes," the authors report. "The CFD calculations of overall nasal resistance for the combined virtual septoplasty with ITR model correlated well with the actual post-surgery calculations."

"As we look to the future, the hope is that this technology can be more routinely used day to day in the armamentarium [the medicines, equipment, and techniques available to a medical practitioner] of otolaryngologists and facial plastic surgeons," the authors conclude. "At this time, CFD technology is truly translational in nature and will require further research and development to reach its full potential for future applications."

More information: Arch Facial Plastic Surg. Published online April 18, 2011. doi:10.1001/archfacial.2011.18

Citation: Virtual surgery shows promise in personalized treatment of nasal obstruction (2011, April 18) retrieved 29 March 2024 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-virtual-surgery-personalized-treatment-nasal.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Explore further

Synthetic, dissolving plates ease repairs of nasal septum defects

 shares

Feedback to editors