George Washington University hospital making use of high technology produced a 360 degree 3D virtual reality(VR) model of lung from a patient who was suffering from COVID-19. It was done to show the world how deadly is corona and it didn’t fail, it spread across the world in so short time.
The patient was in his late 50s and was initially got admitted in different hospital for the symptoms of a common cold. Then after realizing that he was suffering from something big, he got shifted to George Washington University hospital. There he was provided with ventilation but his situation didn’t improve so doctor thought the patient need more intensive care. Then the patient was subjected to ECMO. In extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), blood is pumped outside of patients body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. Such was the case of the patient.
Dr. Keith Mortman used a CAT scan from an actual coronavirus patient to create the virtual reality rendering who was Chief of thoracic surgery at George Washington University hospital. Mortman and a company named Surgical Theatre together created a virtual reality rendering of that patient’s lungs. Model shows extensive damage in both lungs.
This wasn’t the only VR model he created, Mortman used this technology to make this model from another 27 patients both male and female to study about it effects in different individual.
When we look at that 360-degree virtual reality model, the parts that are highlighted in yellow are the diseased tissue. That’s the part that’s affected by the coronavirus. We can see that it’s in both the lungs and can affect different parts of the lobes in lungs.
The thing that makes corona virus deadly is – unlike pneumonia or common flu which affects only part of your lungs, you can see a widespread effect of corona virus inside the patient through the model. We can see from the image that it not only effects both the lungs but also different parts of the lungs, which was reported by Mortman, which remains a characteristic feature of corona. No medicine could prevent this action of corona and even vaccine is hard to come in a short time.
The current world is forced to take a back step thanks to corona. It’s hard to fight corona but not impossible. Vaccination is the key to this fight and till that we will stay back but this time to strike back.
Effects of Coronavirus explained through virtual reality.
