Designing an operating theatre for awake procedures: A solution to improve multimodality information input.

Objective. Many neurosurgical procedures are now performed with the patient aware in order to allow interactions between the patient and healthcare professionals. These procedures include awake brain surgery and spinal cord stimulation(SCS), lead placement for treatment of refractory chronic back and leg pain. Neurosurgical procedures under local anaesthesia require optimal intraoperative cooperation of the patient and all personnel involved in surgery. In addition to accommodating this extra source of intraoperative information all other necessary sources of data relevant to the procedure must be presented. The concept of an operating room dedicated to neurosurgical procedures performed aware and accommodating these concepts is presented, and some evidence for improvements in outcome presented, deriving from a series of patients implanted with spinal cord stimulatorsbefore and after the operating theatre was brought into service. Results and discussion. In addition to the description, two videos demons...