Surgeons 'light up' GI tract to safely remove gall bladder
Wednesday, May 7, 2014 - 10:02
in Health & Medicine
A green fluorescent dye is helping surgeons perform robotic gall bladder surgery more safely. The surgeons in a recently published study used near-infrared light to make the indocyanine green dye light up, allowing them to better see the biliary tract. Injury to the bile duct is rare -- only 0.3 percent of the nearly 600,000 cholecystectomies performed in the U.S. annually -- but it can cause severe complications to patients. Surgeons are increasingly performing the gall bladder surgery robotically -- for better ergonomics, visualization and placement of surgical instruments.