Track loved ones' surgery online (Canada)

Sitting in a hospital waiting room waiting for updates on your loved one's surgery can be stressful. Our new online tracking system, "OR Status," is the first in Ontario to help reduce anxiety by keeping families in the loop on a patient's surgical progress. The real-time updates can be viewed online on a computer or handheld device, allowing family and friends to track the progress of a patient from the comfort of their home or from any location where they have internet access. Debra Anger, who registers people for surgeries at Sunnybrook, is now providing each patient with a unique surgery booking number that they can share with whoever they like. Once a family has the booking number, they can view the operating room tracking board online at sunnybrook.ca/orstatus. Family and friends can see exactly when a patient enters and leaves the operating room, with the information automatically refreshed every minute. A staff member or volunteer still comes to the waiting room to provide family and friends with information, but the service provides another option for families, especially for those with loved ones outside the city or even the country. "My sister and I could leave the hospital waiting room to go for a coffee or stretch our legs without worrying as we knew exactly when our mom went into the operating room. We felt much more involved in the process," says Christine Andrews, whose mother recently underwent knee replacement surgery. "If you can have one less thing to worry about during the stressful time around surgery, it's wonderful. Peace of mind is a priceless thing," she adds

Sunnybrook adopts new heart procedure to treat a condition that is common among elderly patients (Canada)

A new program at Sunnybrook's Schulich Heart Centre is improving access to a potentially lifesaving heart procedure for elderly or frail patients not well enough to undergo traditional aortic valve replacement surgery. With the introduction of the PAVI program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, patients who are considered too high risk for conventional open-heart surgery to replace or repair the aortic valve may be candidates for a substantially less invasive procedure. In this procedure, a team of doctors including an Interventional Cardiologist, Cardiac Surgeon and Vascular Surgeon are able to implant a new valve percutaneously (without opening the chest). "Surgical replacement of the diseased valve with an artificial one is considered the best treatment for aortic valve stenosis," says Dr. Sam Radhakrishnan, Interventional Cardiologist and Physician-Lead of the Percutaneous Aortic Valve Intervention (PAVI) program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. "Unfortunately, many of the patients we see with this condition have significant co-existing medical issues that render them unable to withstand the physical trauma of open-heart surgery. In the past, we have had to treat these patients with drugs alone, which is proven to be less effective than with valve replacement"