A new option for education during surgical procedures and related clinical anatomy in a virtual reality workspace.

The COVID-19 pandemic and mandatory social distancing has brought challenges to anatomy educators who generally need in-person classes. The purpose of this study is to share the experience of a distant online lecture on a surgical procedure and related anatomy in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual reality (VR) workspace and to compare it with reported teaching methods, that is, an in-person class and a Zoom online class. The lecture was delivered by three authors of this article in a VR workspace that enables people to meet through VR. The lectures were about combinations of dental surgical procedures and related clinical anatomy. Physically, the attendees could have been located anywhere in the world, so lecturers joined from the United States and the attendees were all from Japan. VR environment and its flexibility enabled attendees to join the lecture actively, helping them to gain understanding of the surgical procedure and anatomy more efficiently. The use of VR technology with a live communication tool demonstrated in this study has several advantages over previous education methods, although there are still technical issues or disadvantages that need to be addressed. Development of the technology and app/software is required so that more data can be processed at higher speed. Use of VR technology with a live communication tool could be an alternative teaching method. Its overall advantages are a closer look at the slides/monitor and concurrent observation of the multiple assets in various directions by multiple attendees. These advantages cannot be achieved by any other teaching method without VR assets with the workspace provided by Spatial. Even during the mandatory social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this could enable us to foster 3D understanding of surgery and related anatomy. Further study is now needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this newly proposed teaching method by comparing it with traditional in-person and online classes with a live communication tool.

[A case study of pulmonary and pancreatic metastasis from primary renal cell carcinoma more than ten years after nephrectomy].

A 73-year-old man, who had a left nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma at the age of 58, visited our hospital for the treatment of 2 right lung tumors. Both tumors were resected. Immunopathology showed that one of these was a metastatic tumor from renal cell carcinoma, and the other was a primary lung adenocarcinoma. Four years later, a follows-up computed tomography showed a hypervascular nodule in the body of the pancreas. Distal pancreatectomy and spleenectomy were performed, and histopathological analysis revealed that the tumor was a metastasis from renal cell carcinoma. Three months after surgery, multiple liver metastases were discovered, and molecular-targeted therapy was started. If a distant metastasis from renal cell carcinoma can be resected completely, it has been reported that a good long-term prognosis can be expected. Therefore, postoperative long-term follow-up after resection of the renal cell carcinoma is essential, and if possible, the resection of metastasis should be considered.