Virtual reality successfully used in cardiac operation

Virtual reality (VR) technology, over recent years, has improved in leaps and bounds. Technical difficulties and a prohibitively high price tag have kept it largely under the radar in terms of usable technology, but the tide seems to be turning.

Although certain medical specialities already use VR as a training tool, the technology is largely kept out of the operating room.

However, a recent groundbreaking operation might signal the start of VR's increased use within cardiac surgery.

A report published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology describes a first-in-man procedure using VR and Google Glass technology.

A team of cardiologists from the Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw, Poland, carried out a procedure to reopen a chronically blocked right coronary artery.

The VR procedure was undertaken to fix a chronic total occlusion.

This type of operation is often referred to as the "final frontier in interventional cardiology" because of its unpredictable success rates and the associated difficulties in visualizing the occluded coronary arteries with current technology.