STAMFORD: Brynn Blystone knows a thing or two about playing through pain.
As a veteran of the hospitality industry, the 36-year-old gritted his teeth and took turns at restaurants and a butcher shop while suffering from a degenerative disc disease. A few years ago, doctors shaved a bulging spinal disc and underwent a series of painful injections designed to calm the nerve.
“But last fall,” said the Norwalk resident, “I basically went back to being ‘Notre Dame Hunchback.’
It wasn’t until he met Dr. Harvinder Sandhu, who told him he could wear specialized glasses and augmented reality, or AR (something resembling X-ray vision) to fix it.
“He broke things down and told me what was going on and how I could attack him,” Blystone said. “I said, ‘Let’s go with technology.’ And I have my life back.”
Sandhu is co-director of HSS Spine at Stamford Health Special Surgery Hospital, the region’s first healthcare provider that uses advanced AR navigation technology for spine surgery. Through the use of specialized glasses, Sandhu said he is able to see through the tissue surrounding a patient’s spine and provide more accurate and faster surgeries and, by extension, faster recovery with fewer chances of infection.
The technology allows Sandhu to see an overlay of data extracted from MRIs and other technologies superimposed on the patient’s spine, as well as visible written data in the corners of his visual field. Visible terrain means you can identify areas without having to expose more markers along the spinal landscape, as is the case with more traditional surgery, he said.
And Sandhu doesn’t have to continually look at the incision on the computer screen because everything he needs is collected in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s glasses from “The Terminator,” he said.
“We don’t have to be so invasive,” Sandhu said. “You can enter the specific area. It is more accurate than a human hand could be alone.
Sandhu performed the first surgery with the technology at HSS Stamford Health on 28 January. The technology can be used to combat spinal stenosis, herniated discs, misaligned vertebrae and other common diseases, he said.
The surgeon can track progress, determine the position of surgical tools and implants, and view CT scans and X-ray images superimposed on the site in real time, Sandhu said. The headphones project 3D navigation data into the surgeon’s retina, he said.
The technology also allows the surgeon the freedom to correct and alter a planned approach, if necessary, he said.
While training with the computer, the doctor had a staff member take pictures to show their children, who are accustomed to the technology used in virtual reality games.
“They didn’t think their old dad knew anything about glasses and RA,” he said, laughing.
Paul Solis-Cohen, a resident of Woodstock, New York, sought out Sandhu when the pain and progressive weakness of the sciatica left him less able to enjoy his usual activities, such as playing tennis and riding a bicycle. He said he had tried chiropractic and physiotherapy and other remedies without help.
“I tried to find some relief, but I realized that the only alternative I had left was surgery,” said Solis-Cohen, whose days sometimes include lifting 50-pound hay bales at her Catskills farm. .
Sandhu determined that Solis-Cohen needed lumbar decompression surgery involving a laminectomy and spinal fusion of the L4 and L5 vertebrae. He performed the procedure in February.
“I walked into the operating room with leg pain and I was left painless,” Solis-Cohen said.
Six months after surgery, he is back playing tennis and said he hopes to be able to ride a bike comfortably through the cobbled streets of his family’s vacation home in Mexico.
Blystone said he had a similar experience. He said he was awake and walking the day after surgery.
“It was the first time I was standing up again,” he said.
Since then, Blystone said he was able to cope with boat trips and jet skis.
Sandhu said AR technology is applicable to other surgical situations, from joint replacement to the identification of brain tumors. And he expects patients to be more receptive to the “X-ray vision” approach.
“They love it,” he said. “What they still fear is complete robotics.
“At the end of the day, they want to know that their surgeon is in the room and is involved.”