anatomy guide
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Anatomy Guide for Regional Anaesthesia
IRAS ID
253374
Contact name
David Burckett-St.Laurent
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Medaphor Limited
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 3 days
Research summary
Use of regional anaesthesia (RA) and peripheral nerve block (PNB) is growing, although general anaesthesia (GA) is still more common in general surgical practice. Around 65% of all procedures amenable to a regional technique currently use GA (Hanna , et al., 2009), and current NICE guidance is that all regional anaesthesia should be performed using ultrasound guidance (NICE, 2009). However, further increases in regional anaesthesia are expected, as there are significant patient and economic benefits (Cozowicz, Poeran, Jashvant, Zubizarreta, Mazumdar, & Memtsoudis, 2015) (Sakic, et al., 2013) (Williams, Orebaugh, & Hadzic, October 2009). In particular, the per-procedure costs of regional anaesthesia are considerably less than for general anaesthesia (Chakladar & White, 2010).
Although growing, ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia is difficult to learn and difficult to perform (Henderson & Dolan, 2016). There are significant hand-eye-coordination issues as the clinician must simultaneously manipulate both the needle and the ultrasound probe in order to guide the needle to the target. In addition, both the needle and target anatomy can be very difficult to see on the ultrasound image.
We believe that a computer-aided system that highlights key anatomical features on the ultrasound image would make this procedure safer for the patients and simpler for the clinician.
The aim of this clinical investigation is to determine if machine learning can be used to automatically highlight key anatomy on the ultrasound image, and to see if it helps anaesthetists perform ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia.REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NE/0323
Date of REC Opinion
11 Oct 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion