Computer-aided surgical navigation system can make surgical positioning more accurate. (Photo courtesy of Taipei Rong General Hospital) Miss Chen, 36, has blurred vision in her left eye for half a year. MRI showed that the giant neurilemmoma in the left pterygopalatine fossa invaded the maxillary sinus, ethmoid sinus, sphenoid sinus and eye socket and compressed the optic nerve. The navigation system assisted functional endoscopic surgery to remove the tumor, and the patient's vision improved after operation.
Dr. Lan Minying, from the Department of Otolaryngology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, said that paranasal sinuses are gasified bones that surround the orbit and nasal cavity and communicate with the nasal cavity, and are lined with respiratory epithelium. There are four pairs of sinuses, namely frontal sinus (located on the forehead), maxillary sinus (located outside the nasal cavity), ethmoid sinus (located between the eyes) and sphenoid sinus (located at the back and upper part of the nasal cavity). If the inflammation of the lining mucosa of the sinus is caused by bacteria, mold and other infections, it is called sinusitis.
At present, functional endoscopic sinus surgery is the mainstream of sinus surgery. Endoscopy is used to remove the pathological tissues in the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses, restore the opening of paranasal sinuses, and restore the cilia function in paranasal sinuses to normal.
Functional endoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive surgery, and its indications include chronic sinusitis, acute sinusitis with eye or brain complications, and nasal and sinus tumors. Due to the limited visual field of endoscopic surgery, it is necessary to have a detailed understanding of the anatomical structure of nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses to avoid getting lost during the operation.
In addition, thanks to today's technological progress, navigation system-assisted surgery has become the latest trend in clinical surgery. Navigation system assisted surgery is to upload the preoperative image of the patient to the computer system, and then use the principle of optical positioning and extremely precise instruments to establish the three-dimensional positioning image of the affected part and the relative position of the surgical instrument and the patient's surgical site in real time during the operation, so that doctors can avoid hurting important structures during the operation, and achieve the purposes of reducing the operation risk, reducing the operation time and increasing the operation accuracy.
Grasping the relative position of surgical instruments and surgical sites by computer can effectively guide doctors to perform surgery and check the position and situation of surgery at any time. The application of computer-aided surgical navigation system in nasal and paranasal sinus surgery can make the surgical location more accurate, reduce the possibility of surgical complications, make the patient's surgery safer and improve the patient's safety.