Neurosurgeons across the country training with lifelike simulator developed at OHSU

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - Surgeons at Oregon Health & Science University are leading the country in developing state-of-the-art simulations that feel and look completely real. Now, neurosurgeons across the nation are training with the lifelike simulators.

To the untrained eye, it looks, sounds and even feels like a real procedure. But it’s actually neurosurgeons in training performing a lifelike simulation.

In this intense training, worst-case scenarios are thrown at doctors and they have to think – fast.

“Some of the most important things that can influence life or death in the moment, happen very rarely,” said Dr. Nathan Selden. “So what we wanted to do was create a simulator that allows those catastrophic things to happen.”

Selden says the brain surgery simulator was developed at OHSU by residents, including Dr. Dominic Siler.

“You are the senior surgeon in the room, you have been instructed to perform a craniometry,” Siler said. “It’s a little bit of a theatre, we want to recreate the atmosphere.”

To do that, the sophisticated simulation includes plastic skin, 3D printing technology, and even fake blood – all to recreate real procedures and the complications that come with them.

“We can let them struggle, get nervous, make mistakes without any harm to patient,” Selden said. “Before this simulator, we didn’t have any way to people through crisis, with real tools, real pressure, real bleeding, real stress.”

OHSU’s technology is now required in brain surgery training for neurosurgeons all across the country. It’s giving them real-life experience, without risking the life of a patient.

“We put Fitbits on people and their heart rates go through the roof, so it really immerses you in the situation,” said Selden.