Ana Maria has never been to Machu Picchu. The 61-year-old\u00a0<\/strong>always wanted to visit the mountain ruins but she suffers from\u00a0<\/strong>hypertension, and doctors warned that the extreme altitude could cause her blood pressure to rise dangerously high. Today, dressed in a white gown and hairnet, she will explore its ancient walls and pyramids for the first time.<\/p>\n She\u2019s in a private medical clinic in Mexico City, and laughs nervously as she\u2019s wheeled into a windowless operating room. The surgeon takes a Sharpie and draws a large circle on her left thigh, paints on several layers of iodine, then injects a local anaesthetic into the skin. Inside the circle is a fatty lump, a lipoma around 6 cm across, which he is about to remove.<\/p>\n Ana will be awake for the operation, and she\u2019s feeling scared. As the surgeon readies his scalpel, her blood pressure is 183\/93, even higher than usual. Patients undergoing procedures like this often have to be sedated to cope with the pain and anxiety of being under the knife, but not today. Instead, Jos\u00e9 Luis Mosso Vazquez, who is supervising the operation, fits a sleek, black headset over Anna\u2019s eyes and adjusts the Velcro straps.<\/p>\n The surgeon makes his first cut and the blood spills in a crimson stream down Ana\u2019s leg. She\u2019s surrounded by medical equipment \u2013 stools, trolleys, swabs, syringes, with super-bright surgical lamps suspended above the bed and her vital signs displayed on monitors just behind. But Ana is oblivious. She\u2019s immersed in a three-dimensional re-creation of Machu Picchu. She begins her journey with a breathtaking aerial view of the ancient city clinging to the mountainside, before swooping down to explore the details of stepped terraces, moss-covered walls and tiny stone huts.<\/p>\n Mosso watches her carefully. A 54-year-old surgeon at Panamerican University in Mexico City, he\u2019s on a mission to bring virtual reality into the operating room, using the high-tech distraction technique to carry out surgeries that would normally require powerful painkillers and sedatives, with nothing more than local anaesthetic. He\u2019s trying to prove that reducing drug doses in this way not only slashes costs for Mexico\u2019s cash-strapped hospitals, but cuts complications and recovery times for patients, too.<\/p>\nReference:<\/h4>\n
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