Abstract.
With few exceptions the interventional rooms of the present are either imaging suites or sterile operating rooms. Their users are restricted to either percutaneous procedures or to two-staged image-guided surgery without intra-operative imaging control. Since interventional therapy of the future will be minimally invasive and since minimally invasive therapy is essentially image-guided therapy, a new physical place for these activities has to be devised: the multifunctional therapy room of the future integrates sophisticated imaging and image guidance modalities together with advanced surgical and life-support equipment in a sterile environment [1, 2, 3]. Even given a high degree of integration, this will be a complex and costly piece of medical technology. These two factors – complexity and cost – require interdisciplinary technological and medical collaboration to bring it into existence, distribute its cost and maximize usage and medical benefit. Yet another dimension of multifunctionality will be introduced and a significant impact on the care of vitally threatened patients will be exerted by using this room not only for elective image-guided therapy but also for emergent one-stop diagnosis and treatment. Motivation, technology, implementation strategies and funding of this image-guided, integrated and interdisciplinary therapy room, as well as a comprehensive approach combining emergency care and elective computer-assisted therapy (CAT), are discussed in this paper.
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Received: 28 October 1999; Revised: 18 February 2000; Accepted: 6 April 2000
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Jacob, A., Regazzoni, P., Steinbrich, W. et al. The multifunctional therapy room of the future: image guidance, interdisciplinarity, integration and impact on patient pathways. Eur Radiol 10, 1763–1769 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/s003300000485
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s003300000485