Live tweeting from a Seattle operating room

Pre-surgery check list – scrub, sterilize and send out a test tweet.

That’s what the operating room team at Swedish Medical Center did this morning, as they prepared for the first live-tweeting of surgery in Seattle. Incidentally, the very first live operating room tweets happened last year at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

This morning, to raise awareness about kidney disease and advances in treatment, James Porter, M.D. operated on a 69-year-old man from California. The patient was fine with it, by the way, probably because the surgeon wasn’t actually tweeting. Four others who observed the surgery did the tweets.

One of the observers/tweeters was PR pro Aaron Blank who took this photo:

He also tweeted a few other photos, but I’m surgery-phobic and don’t want to look. You’re welcome to check them out here.

We talked with Melissa Tizon, who was one of the live tweeters, earlier today. She described the procedure as “the latest advance in kidney surgery.” Dr. Porter, a urologic surgeon and medical director of Swedish’s Robotic-Assisted Surgery program, is the only doctor in the country using this procedure.

“The procedure makes it possible to precisely remove the diseased part of the kidney, and allows the patient to recover much faster than the traditional surgery,” Tizon says.

And, all went well. The patient will go home by the end of the week.