The Navigation‐Controlled Drill in Temporal Bone Surgery: A Feasibility Study

Abstract

The results that follow prove the fundamental feasibility of an NC drill for surgery of the petrosal bone using the example of the simple mastoidectomy in the laboratory test. When using NC, tissue resection is faster, more precise, and has fewer related complications than the same procedure without. The results offer a very promising basis for the introduction of a newly conceived system to the procedure of NC surgery on the petrosal bone. The device configuration used here was originally conceived for NC guidance of a shaver in functional endoscopic sinus surgery. Individual errors will have to be mitigated through the new version of the control unit presently in development.

Automatic identification of otologic drilling faults: a preliminary report

“…Injuring these important structures can have serious consequences for the patient, so minimizing or avoiding damage caused by loss of control during drilling is an important issue. Thus far, some navigational (3)(4)(5) or robotic (6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11) concepts for guiding the drill have been pursued in experimental temporal bone surgery, but certain key problems have not been resolved, and these studies have not yet led to clinical application.…”

Evaluation of a navigated and power controlled milling system “navigated control spine” for spinal surgery

“…In this report the feasibility of the recently introduced system "navigated control spine" (NC spine) [5,6] was tested in two separate studies. The system which is related to the system navigated control mastoid (NC mastoid presented in [7,8]) and follows the same concept of navigation based power control [9] is based on fluoroscopic images of the target from an isocentric fluoroscope alone. The navigation is realised with an optical navigation system.…”

Image-Guided Technique in Neurotology

“…In otology/neurotology, in which the surgical field is encased in rigid bone, the use of IGS to define boundaries and prevent transgressions has great appeal. Two groups have been working on this, including the authors [18] and a group from Germany [19]. The concept is simple: define the boundaries of the surgical field (eg, tegmen, sigmoid, external auditory canal, facial nerve, labyrinth), track the position of the drill, and turn it off when the drill approaches vital anatomy.…”