Please join physicians from Henry Ford for our next live Twitter surgery event on February 9th.

Dr. Craig Rogers will lead a surgical team from Henry Ford Hospital as they perform a robotic partial nephrectomy. The public will be able to receive updates and information from OR 25 at Henry Ford Hospital, and communicate with the surgeons via the Twitter microblogging service.

The Case: The patient is a 60-year-old-male with a large left kidney mass that biopsy has proven as kidney cancer. The patient was scheduled for an open total nephrectomy at another institution but elected to come to Henry Ford for the robotic surgery.

This is a difficult case in that the tumor is large and is in a challenging location on top of the kidney. One potential treatment option for a mass this large is to remove the entire kidney. However, this patient has minor renal insufficiency, and would benefit from saving the kidney if possible. There is a possibility that the team may make an intraoperative decision to remove the entire kidney if the tumor appears more extensive at the time of surgery than initially thought based on radiologic images.

How to follow the case: The case can be followed on Twitter. Information will be posted under @henryfordnews.  Posts will be identified with the #HFHOR tag and questions for the surgeons should be addressed to @henryfordnews with the same tag. The case is scheduled for February 9th and will begin at approximately 8:30 a.m. Twittering will begin at approximately 9:30 a.m.

What is Twitter? Twitter is a free micro-blogging service that allows users to broadcast and exchange short messages (less than 140 characters). For more information or to sign up for an account to go Twitter.com