Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center have completed a study which demonstrates that image guided surgery, integrating medical imaging, sensor technology, and computers, offers safe, effective, and minimally invasive surgical alternatives for children with select diseases of the head and neck. IGS has been shown to enhance endoscopic surgical safety and thoroughness for difficult sinus surgeries in adults. This technology now has been adapted from adults to children.
Children have disease processes that are much different from their adult counterparts.
Surgery for deep neck abscesses in children commonly results in unsightly scars on the neck. IGS facilitates endoscopic removal of large juvenile nasopharyngeal angiofibromas, intraoral incision and drainage of selected parapharyngeal and retropharyngeal abscesses, endoscopic intranasal repair of choanal atresia, and difficult pediatric endoscopic sinus and skull base surgery. No IGS complications were encountered. Because these children had fewer incisions and less surgical dissection, they were able to go home sooner with less pain medication. IGS offers safe and effective new surgical applications in pediatric otolaryngology.