July 26, 2002

Medicine across the miles: MGH physicians assist surgery at South Pole

MGH clinicians are accustomed to treating patients from around the world, but these patients usually come to the MGH. Recently, however, two MGH physicians helped treat a patient for the first time at the South Pole using the art of telemedicine. Bertram Zarins, MD, of MGH Orthopaedics, and Vicki Modest, MD, of MGH Anesthesiology and Critical Care, helped a physician at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station perform surgery earlier this month on a meteorologist who injured his knee in a fall.

Because of the extreme winter conditions in Antarctica, the patient, Dar Gibson (shown below), could not be evacuated for four months. Using a telemedicine video link, Modest was able to guide South Pole physician Timothy Pollard, MD, through the placement of a spinal anesthetic. This was followed by Zarins' guidance in suturing the patient's damaged tendon.

"With regard to the anesthetic, it's all in the preparation," says Modest. "I made sure that the patient fully understood and agreed to what was going to happen to him. This helped the telemedical anesthesia to proceed without a hitch." Communication links between the United States and Antarctica have been used before in assisting with medical procedures, but this is the first time in the South Pole program's nearly 50-year history that telemedicine was used for surgery.

"Because of the many unknowns, the hardest part was arriving at the decision to operate," says Zarins. "Left untreated, the injury would have resulted in a significant disability. I am happy everything turned out well and the patient is recuperating."