Surgeons eye special machines as part of hospitals’ $1.8M drive
As eye surgeon Dr. Rusty Ritenour peeled back a layer of a cornea to transplant, his hands and feet guiding highly specialized equipment in a working area smaller than a fingernail, he made his case for why Victoria hospitals want the best medical equipment.
Ritenour was the face of the Victoria Hospitals Foundation fall fundraising launch at Royal Jubilee Hospital on Tuesday.
It’s the foundation’s largest fall campaign yet, with a target of $1.8 million for 72 pieces of surgical equipment for Victoria’s two biggest hospitals.
The equipment needed is in 14 surgical specialty areas — including eight pieces needed for eye surgery, four pieces for neurosurgery, two for cardiac surgery, and 18 drills and saws for orthopedic surgery.
Ritenour and the 10 other eye surgeons he works with need two phacoemulsification machines. The machine, which costs about $91,000, is one of the most important pieces of equipment, as it is used in almost every type of procedure that eye surgeons perform.
They are the “workhorses,” said Ritenour, and perform three key roles during cornea and cataract surgeries: maintaining fluid in the eye after incision by infusing a special saline solution into the eye to keep it inflated so it doesn’t collapse, vacuuming out a broken cataract or removing fluid, and ultrasound imaging.
The machine is continuously manipulated by the surgeon’s hands and feet.
Royal Jubilee’s three current machines are 10 years old, Ritenour said. In a video, he showed how the machine is used.
Ritenour specializes in the front part of the eye, the clear lenses and the cornea, which he describes as being like the windshield. If the cornea is blurred or fogged, a person can’t see. Almost all diseases of the cornea cloud it.
Traditional cornea transplant urgery replaced the entire windshield with a new one (derived from an organ donation), whereas now a partial transplant can be done in cases where the disease is only in the back portion of the eye.
“That has been the revolution,” said Ritenour. And rather than stitches, the tissue is positioned and attaches with the manipulation of an air bubble “and we’re done — not a single suture placed.”
In the case of partial transplant surgery, full recovery for ideal vision is reduced to two to four weeks from 18 months.
“It’s a major revolution in the patient’s recovery time,” he said.
“For me and my colleagues to continue to perform these surgeries to the best of our ability, we need the latest specialized equipment,” said Ritenour.
Ritenour pointed to patient Cheryl, who was losing her vision due to Fuchs’ dystrophy. The nurse had a corneal transplant in 2012 for one eye and in 2014 for the other eye. Without the surgery, she would have become legally blind. Instead, she is still practising as a nurse today.
Last year, 11 surgeons representing all subspecialty skills performed more than 5,800 eye surgeries — more than 4,300 of them cataract surgeries.
By comparison, a decade ago 1,000 fewer eye surgeries were performed. Corneal transplants increased to 73 in 2015 from 32 in 2012, Ritenour said.
Almost all types of eye surgery — from corneal transplants to retinal detachment — can be performed here, Ritenour said.
It’s the growing sophistication of such equipment and techniques that allows 98 per cent of all surgeries today to be performed here on Vancouver Island, said Victoria Hospital Foundation board chairman John Madden.
New innovations and equipment have also led to less-invasive surgeries “that have shortened recovery times, decreased hospital stays and improved patient outcomes,” said Madden.
However, the rapid growth of technological advances also demands keeping pace with new equipment. One only has to look at the upgrades to mobile phones and laptops over the past decade to imagine how medical equipment has also advanced, Ritenour said.
About 52,000 surgeries are performed at Royal Jubilee and Victoria General hospitals every year, according to the foundation.
The fall fundraising campaign will roll out over the next 14 weeks under the theme Behind the Mask: A Quiet Revolution in Care.
The Victoria Hospitals Foundation works in partnership with the Vancouver Island Health Authority to allow for donations to Vancouver Island’s two largest and most comprehensive hospitals: The Royal Jubilee and the Victoria General.
Since 1989, the Victoria Hospitals Foundation has raised more than $121 million for the area’s hospitals.
For more information, call the foundation at 250-519-1750 or go to victoriahf.ca.
Contributions can be made by donating online at victoriahf.ca, calling 250-519-1750 or mailing to Wilson Block, 1952 Bay St., Victoria, B.C., V8R 1J8.