Scottish surgeons are taking medical social media to a whole new level, adding live broadcasts and tweets to the already complicated procedures of percutaneous cardiovascular interventions.
 
A six-member Edinburgh Royal Infirmary team answered tweets and questions posed from an audience of thousands during a live broadcast of four medical procedures performed at the hospital in Scotland.
 
The procedures – which included a transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) – were broadcasted to a EuroPCR conference live in May. (EuroPCR is the official congress of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions.) This was the first time an Edinburgh team took part in a project of this nature on an international scale.
 
“It is quite stressful and there’s a little bit more pressure because we’re talking to people and trying to keep to time, and also making sure we’re doing the procedure as well as we can,” Dr. Neal Uren, NHS Lothian’s clinical director for cardiac services at the Edinburgh Heart Centre said to the Edinburgh Evening News.
The live broadcast was part of an educational initiative to help surgeons better understand the new procedure.
 
In the United States, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) codes were added as category I codes in CPT 2013. For tips on coding for TAVR/TAVI, turn to Cardiology Coder’s Pink Sheet.