when technology is put at the service of surgery – Libération

For the first time, in Bordeaux in September, a patient suffering from a cancerous kidney tumor was operated on using augmented reality. This technique, particularly used in the field of video games, is tending to develop and constitutes a turning point in the robotization of surgery.

It was an event that went almost unnoticed. In the world of white coats, however, he made a big splash. On September 13, 2024, a thousand doctors from all over the world flocked to Bordeaux to attend, live, the very first renal surgery operation with caval thrombectomy guided by augmented reality. On the table, a man in his sixties suffering from advanced renal cancer. The intervention, which would have been science fiction just a few years ago, was carried out for five hours by Professor Jean-Christophe Bernhard, a urologist specializing in robotic surgery, assisted by Doctor Gaëlle Margue and her team from urology department of Bordeaux University Hospital. It is the culmination of two and a half years of intensive collaboration with the Surgar team, a French start-up which developed the first augmented reality software dedicated to surgery. Three months after achieving this medical feat, the duo returned to Liberation on the genesis of the project and the way in which it could shake up modern surgery as we know it.

For beginners who know nothing about the concept of augmented reality, this technology allows 3D computer-generated images to be superimposed on shots filmed in real time. In the field of video games, this gave rise to the global success of Pokémon Go, in 2016, a mobile game where the objective is to capture virtual creatures that wander around our real world.