BACKGROUND

1. Field of Invention

Inventive aspects are associated with medical devices used during surgery. More specifically, aspects are associated with surgical instrument wear tracking.

2. Art

Surgeons typically undertake extensive study before performing a surgical procedure. Traditionally, surgeons were limited to the study of generic anatomical models, such as photographs or drawings. More recently, various pre-operative diagnostic procedures (e.g., x-ray, CT. MRI, etc.) have made patient-specific anatomical information available.

In some cases, it is desirable to make additional, relevant anatomic and surgical procedure information available to a surgeon. In one aspect, it is desirable to provide a surgeon planning an operation on a particular patient with a surgical site video recording of an earlier surgical procedure performed on the particular patient. In another aspect, it is desirable to provide a surgeon with one or more surgical video recordings of surgical procedures on other patients that are similar to the surgical procedure planned for a particular patient. In one aspect, it is desirable to provide such information to a surgeon prior to the surgeon undertaking a particular surgical procedure. And in another aspect, it may be desirable to provide this information to a surgeon intraoperatively.

In one aspect, it is desirable to configure a video database that includes intraoperative surgical site video recordings of various procedures undergone by various patients. In one aspect, it is desirable to configure a medical device capable of video recording to further include an input that enables a surgeon using the medical device to highlight and annotate the video recording in real time as it is being recorded. In one aspect, it is desirable to configure a computer-based pattern matching algorithm to search through the individual records of the video database, identify relevant video records, and provide a surgeon with this relevant information for a particular surgical procedure.

SUMMARY

The following summary introduces certain aspects of the inventive subject matter in order to provide a basic understanding. This summary is not an extensive overview of the inventive subject matter, and it is not intended to identify key or critical elements or to delineate the scope of the inventive subject matter. Although this summary contains information that is relevant to various aspects and embodiments of the inventive subject matter, its sole purpose is to present some aspects and embodiments in a general form as a prelude to the more detailed description below.

A surgical method for use with a teleoperated surgical system that includes a surgical instrument and a surgical instrument actuator. A first information structure is provided in a computer readable storage device that associates a surgical instrument identifier with an indication of remaining useful lifetime of the identified surgical instrument. A second information structure is provided in a second information structure in a computer readable storage device that associates a surgical instrument wear-down actuation state with a surgical instrument lifetime reduction amount. Surgical instrument actuator state of the identified surgical instrument is tracked during performance of a surgical procedure. The indication in the first information structure of remaining useful lifetime of the identified surgical instrument is reduced by the surgical instrument lifetime reduction amount in the second information structure in response to the tracked surgical instrument actuator state matching the surgical instrument wear-down actuation state during the performance of the surgical procedure.

