I think that it’s less about the pain because yeah you could probably use some sort of a local anesthetic for the scalp tissue, but I can’t imagine what all the vibrations and sounds passing through skull feels like, especially when power tools are used to drill into the skull or cut out a small section.
> but I can’t imagine what all the vibrations and sounds passing through skull feels like, especially when power tools are used to drill into the skull or cut out a small section.
I imagine it might be similar to having a cavity filled.
Strange, I imagine, because you'd have the vibrations and sounds as you describe of the actual cutting, but also the feeling (whatever that's like) of reducing intracranial pressure.
If the drill is medical grade and extremely fast, you might not feel any vibrations at all, almost like a laser. Should feel like a scrape more than anything.
I don't know what you (personally) imagine when you say 'medical grade', but surgery (other than robots and keyhole I suppose) is pretty brutal and mechanical. A 'medical-grade drill' is basically whatever's been approved for medical use, not (necessarily, though I don't doubt they exist) something special that isn't also sold for drilling masonry.
When I’ve had surgery that was the joke the doctor told. It’s just a $10,000 version of a tool you’d pick up at Home Depot.
Obviously there are some things that would be different. For example a big issue is you’d want to use non-toxic lubricant on all the parts. Not sure what non-toxic means but I’m sure there is something (vegetable oil? Silicone?)
You’d also want to make sure it won’t fling off tiny metal or plastic shards from the tool. Don’t want that to get into the body. You’d probably have to seal up any ventilation openings in such a way that crap couldn’t escape.
I’m sure mechanically you’d want it to be as tight of tolerance as you could get away with—you probably don’t want a lot of slop when cutting open some dudes skull. Vibration and such probably play into that tolerance bit…
Of course it could just literally be a rebranded Ryobi or something for all I know. But I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Too many additional requirements means it is probably something slightly fancier.
The ones used in the operating room are different, but for putting traction pins in broken legs (in mid-shaft femur fractures, they will put a pin through the lower part of the femur and hang weights off the end of the bed to straighten the fracture out until the patient can go to surgery), they just use a regular cordless drill since the procedure is not fully sterile.
100%, orthopedics are intense. They use pneumatic drills and saws so the auto shop analogy isn't far off. In the med device industry ortho docs are often described as mechanics and they often have a lot of physical issues themselves ad they age because it's such hard physical work.
Not long ago I designed a set of bone taps and drills along with a bunch of related instruments and they were designed and made not much differently than high end tools for metal or woodworking.
