MSU Health Care Hand Surgeon Pioneering Virtual Reality for Awake Procedures in the Office Setting

<p>Jamie Clarkson is a fellowship-trained plastic and reconstructive surgeon specializing in the hand and a pioneer in the field of the use of virtual reality for patients in the office setting. He is the chief of the <a href="https://healthcare.msu.edu/services/specialty-care/surgery/hand-surgery.aspx">Hand Management Unit at MSU Health Care</a>. He's also an assistant professor in the College of Human Medicine at MSU. </p><p>“The largest number of people I see have peripheral nerve compression and carpal tunnel syndrome. The other thing I obviously treat is trauma. We see huge numbers of injuries. I've been on call for Sparrow and McLaren Hospitals for 12 years. We've had every type of imaginable injury from farm vehicle injuries to firework injuries to the most common injury in the world, which is getting your finger caught in your door.</p><p>“I'm a minimalist. The hand is like the mouth. It can be made numb. And if you think about it, dentists have forever done awake surgery on their patients. I don't go to the dentist to get a general anesthetic, except under very unusual cases. And in hand surgery, when I came to the states, I was really surprised to see how much general anesthetic we were using.</p><p>“Back in the British National Health, I could give someone a local anesthetic, and we'd be able to do a carpal tunnel release, or trigger finger release, or remove ganglions. And some of the simpler things around the hand, indeed, some of the complicated things around the hand, can be done just under local anesthetic. And it really brought up in my mind a sense that the patients needed a choice. They don't necessarily want to be put to sleep, although they often think they do.</p><p>“The phrase, ‘Just put me out, doc: I don't want to know anything about it,’ came up quite a lot when I started offering awake hand surgery to my patients. And one evening, I got home, and my kids and I were playing with a virtual reality headset. I realized, ‘Oh, this is an incredible way to change your experience, with