Virtual reality and 3D visualizations in heart surgery education.

Background: Computer assisted teaching plays an increasing role in surgical education. The presented paper describes the development of virtual reality (VR) and 3D visualizations for educational purposes concerning aortocoronary bypass grafting and their prototypical implementation into a database-driven and internet-based educational system in heart surgery.

Materials And Methods: A multimedia storyboard has been written and digital video has been encoded.

The CardioOP-Data Clas (CDC). Development and application of a thesaurus for content management and multi-user teleteaching in cardiac surgery.

Objectives: Self-directed and customized medical education programs are gaining importance in health care instruction. We prototypically implemented a repository-driven online computer system (CardioOP) for teleteaching in Heart Surgery. It supports authoring and multiple re-use of multimedia data for different user groups in different instructional applications and therefore requires a process of content management.

CardioOp: an integrated approach to teleteaching in cardiac surgery.

Introduction/purpose: The complexity of cardiac surgery requires continuous training, education and information addressing different individuals: physicians (cardiac surgeons, residents, anaesthesiologists, cardiologists), medical students, perfusionists and patients. Efficacy and efficiency of education and training will likely be improved by the use of multimedia information systems. Nevertheless, computer-based education is facing some serious disadvantages: 1) multimedia productions require tremendous financial and time resources; 2) the obtained multimedia data are only usable for one specific target user group in one specific instructional context; 3) computer based learning programs often show deficiencies in the support of individual learning styles and in providing individual information adjusted to the learner's individual needs.

Midtrimester tubal pregnancy with markedly elevated maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein. A case report.

Elevated maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein levels have been reported to occur in a variety of pathologic conditions, including early tubal pregnancy. In this case, markedly elevated maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein was associated with a midtrimester tubal pregnancy. The breakdown of the normal fetomaternal circulatory barrier, allowing the transplacental exchange of alpha-fetoprotein, was the likely etiology of the elevation.