Intraoperative photography is now widely available, but is underused by referring practitioners and consulting specialists. However, its role may extend to providing documentation for personal records, to communication with referring practitioners and to complementing operative or legal reports. Photographic records may enable more appropriate decisions to be be made after reflection or consultation. Documentation is ideal for comparison before and after surgery, or for monitoring the progress of certain diseases. In gynaecological practice, the documentation of normal findings is particularly useful, especially when investigating pelvic pain.
Image capture is useful for validating the operative procedure.
When images are shown at the postoperative visit, the patient has no doubt that the planned procedure has been performed, that all areas under suspicion have been thoroughly inspected and that the appropriate findings have been recorded. Apart from some historical reports, 1-7 the usefulness and acceptability of intraoperative photography have not been addressed in the current medical literature. We aimed to assess the views of patients, doctors and nurses about intraoperative photographic documentation. We invited all 28 patients who underwent endoscopic surgery between 1 February and 1 May 1998 for whom good quality operative photographs were available to participate in the study. Medical and nursing staff were randomly selected from lists of practitioners within the Southwest Sydney Area Health Service.