The team at 360VR Community continues in its weekly tradition of bringing you Good News from the world of 360VR. This week, we are pleased to this heartwarming story of two little girls, born as conjoined twins, whose lives were saved thanks to the use of virtual reality.
When Paris Bryan had a routine ultrasound of her unborn daughters Paisleigh and Paislyn, the result was anything but routine. It showed the girls were conjoined twins, connected through the chest, liver, and heart. The news rocked Bryan and her fiancé, Ernesto Martinez. “When I was pregnant with them, [medical professionals] were basically saying they weren’t sure [the twins] would make it…” Bryan says.
During an 18-year career in medicine, Daniel Saltzman — the chief of pediatric surgery at University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital — has grown accustomed to looking at X-rays as if they were imperfect road maps of the human body.
For decades, increasingly sophisticated imaging techniques have allowed doctors to peer into the human body before they cut it open, reducing uncertainty and helping them prepare for complicated procedures. Now, advances in virtual reality may flip that dynamic on its head, allowing doctors to confront the unknown before they even enter the body.
“That’s why medicine is still an art as much as a science… It felt like I was working in the future,” Saltzman said. “It was extraordinarily exhilarating.”
The Future is Now, and it is indeed exhilarating.
