Hybrid hi-tech room for gastroenterological diseases at Cemad-Gemelli

An important piece enriches the Digestive System Disease Center (Cemad) of the Agostino Gemelli Irccs University Polyclinic Foundation in Rome: the first hybrid room in Italy dedicated to the endoscopic treatment of gastroenterological pathologies. It is a full-blown operating room (Hybrid Operating Room), extraordinarily equipped internally with state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging equipment. The new hybrid room was supported by the Fondazione Roma and its honorary president Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele. “The one inaugurated today – explained Antonio Gasbarrini, director of the Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences of Gemelli and full professor of Internal Medicine at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome campus – is one of the very few hybrid rooms in the world dedicated to gastroenterological pathologies and houses two very advanced imaging technologies in an integrated way: a 128-layer CT scan, able to move on a dedicated track to reach the operating table where the patient is placed and a robotic multiaxial angiograph, a special equipment that allows to obtain a radiographic projection dynamic from every possible angle, intra-operative. “” The new operating room / hybrid endoscopy – adds Guido Costamagna, director of the Operative Unit of Surgical Digestive Endoscopy of Gemelli and of the University Department of Translational Medicine and Surgery of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart – is added to the 8 sa existing endoscopic systems, offering the possibility of performing numerous and innovative integrated endoscopic / surgical / radiological therapeutic procedures in all districts of the digestive system. Thanks to the new hybrid room, our Center, already widely recognized as a national and international reference for the minimally invasive approach to particularly complex patients, is further enriched in the capacity to offer assistance, science and teaching “.” Today we are at dawn. of a new era of Cemad – continued Gasbarrini – which envisages our renewed commitment in the field of hepato-bilio-pancreatic pathologies, with the most modern equipment and spaces. A dream that has been cultivated for some time that today becomes reality thanks to the extraordinary vision and generosity of the Fondazione Roma and its honorary president, Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele, and of the president Franco Parasassi. “Today’s inauguration – underlined Emanuele – represents a new stage in an articulated path of collaboration with the Gemelli Polyclinic, which I strongly wanted since 2016, when I was president of the Rome Foundation, when I sensed the opportunity to give you ta a national reference center for the treatment and diagnosis of diseases of the digestive system, a process that today reaches an important moment with the completion of the hybrid room. Thanks to it – he added – Cemad has what it takes to provide innovative and highly complex diagnostic and treatment services, and to consolidate that reputation now at an absolute and international level, decreed by the recognition of third place in the world for current year 2021 as a center of excellence for diseases of the digestive system attributed by the American magazine ‘Newsweek’, above all by virtue of the convinced and repeated support offered by the Rome Foundation “” Today, therefore, I am particularly satisfied, because what I had hypothesized several years ago, it happily takes shape, and also because the partnership with Gemini, which I also started a long time ago, continues to produce extraordinary fruits and will continue to produce even more amazing ones in the future “, he recalled.” I want to underline on this happy occasion – remarked the president of the Rome Foundation, Franco Parasassi – that the Rome Foundation accompanies the Cemad f since its conception and has supported it since 2016, providing a total of almost 4.8 million euros, of which 2.8 million for the hybrid room inaugurated today “. “Our heartfelt thanks – commented Carlo Fratta Pasini, president of the Gemelli Polyclinic Foundation – today goes to the honorary president Emmanuele Emanuele and the Rome Foundation for the far-sightedness, closeness and constant support offered to Cemad, since its inception. This constant support has allowed the Center to achieve international goals of excellence in the field of digestive system diseases, for the benefit of all patients. “The ‘brain’ of the hybrid room is a state-of-the-art video-integration system, crucial element of the system as the image sources that the surgeon uses are many. The image integration software is able, for example, to make an automatic ‘road map’ of the blood vessels, to show which is the crossing range of the operating instruments; or to virtually extend the surgical instrument so as to show the surgeon which organs it will cross or which nerves or vessels it will encounter on a given trajectory. The CT scan and the angiograph can be recalled to the operating field at any time, without moving the patient.