Hospitals, Patient Engagement

Indiana hospital gives Twitterverse a front row seat in the OR for a partial knee replacement

Live tweeting a surgery isn’t exactly a novel social media tactic anymore. Since 2009, dozens […]

Live tweeting a surgery isn’t exactly a novel social media tactic anymore. Since 2009, dozens of hospitals have narrated procedures with 140-character tidbits, from hand transplants to hysterectomies.

So it wasn’t particularly earth-shattering that Elkhart General Hospital live tweeted a partial knee replacement surgery yesterday. Ohio State University Medical Center tweeted a knee replacement surgery back in June of 2011, and I’ve followed others’ live tweets that were much more interactive.

But we’ve been writing so much about the growing number of joint replacement surgeries, and how hospitals and medical device companies are trying to figure out how to make surgery more efficient, that I couldn’t help but take interest in EGH’s live tweet through the 45-minute procedure.

It’s a relatively small hospital system, but its communications team did an especially good job of sharing relevant, nonsquirm-worthy photos and giving an up close look at some of the technology used during these procedures, like the Oxford Partial Knee implant distributed by Biomet and barbed sutures.

Check out some of the highlights below.

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