Red Deer hospital patients are benefiting from seven new pieces of operating room equipment funded through the 2021 Festival of Trees put on by Red Deer Regional Health Foundation. The upgraded equipment cost about $535,000 and started arriving in June, with the last one arriving July 29.

There is some equipment that needed some replacement, but some of it is new. Some of it is things we’ve never had on site before, like the ENT navigation system.

An ENT navigation system, used to treat chronic sinus infections, nasal polyps and masses, skull base legions, tumor biopsies and infections around the eye, provides a 3D camera image for surgeons to better navigate and avoid damage to the brain.

Without the equipment, Red Deer has been sending about 30 per cent of patients needing that surgery to Calgary or Edmonton. Transfers will be significantly decreased because physicians will have the equipment and the confidence to do the surgeries that they should be doing here in Red Deer.

It’s equipment that new medical residents expect, and Red Deer’s ENT equipment is also newer and more advanced than in Calgary and Edmonton.

The other six pieces of equipment include:

• A laparoscopic ultrasound system to provide outstanding image quality that allows the surgeon to see the tiniest margins of lesions.

• An aspirator to help perform liposuction during plastic surgery.

• An entropy module, which is a sensor is placed on a patient’s forehead undergoing general anesthetic or sedation.

• A phaco emulsification platform that assists in fluid pressure management inside the eye to make cataract procedures safer for patients. It also has advanced ultrasonic cutting capability for difficult cases.

• A nephroscope, which is a medical telescope used to go into a kidney or bladder and view large kidney or bladder stones.

• A lithotripter SE system, used in conjunction with the nepthroscope to remove large kidney stones, which will reduce the number of patients being deferred to Calgary or Edmonton.