Doctor makes history with live tweets of surgery

CHENNAI, INDIA: Tweeting has become a mode of reaching out to the people “at the speed of light”. However, when a doctor embraces the microblogging phenomenon called Twitter to tweet a live demonstration of the entire procedure of a knee replacement surgery, that becomes sort of history.

And exactly that was what Dr A K Venkatachalam, an orthopaedic surgeon from Chennai, did on the night of June 17, by live tweeting a knee replacement surgery that he performed at Chettinad Health City Hospital. He kept on posting the tweets about the progress of the surgery on his twitter page (http://twitter.com/akvenkat) till the wee hours of June 18, 2009, when the surgery was completed.

Apart from the tweets he also uploaded the photographs of the detailed step-by-step development of the surgery on twitpic.com.

Dr Venkatachalam claimed, this was India’s first live Twitter cast of a knee replacement surgery and the second in the world that an orthopaedic operation was Twitter cast, the first one also being a replacement surgery performed in US.

The tweeting, which began with the description and picture of the medical team performing the surgery, ends with the tweet, “Postoperative knee flexion ..leg touching the thigh ..a very good surgery indeed. This lady will be able to squat and do yoga.”

When asked what prompted him to live Tweet his surgery, Dr Venkatachalam who is an Assistant Professor at Chettinad Medical College, said that it gave medical students and prospective patients an opportunity to witness a live surgery and understand what went on.

However, here arises a question of ethics. Is it justified for a surgeon to go public about the graphic details of a surgery? Isn't there an invasion of privacy?