Paging Dr. Twitter

Social networking has been a way for people to connect with long lost high school friends, play Scrabble with the person in the cubicle next to them and follow news stories from the other side of the globe. The next frontier? The operating room.

More and more physicians are using social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about procedures as they're happening, according to CNN.

At Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit this morning, a group of surgeons operated on a kidney to remove a cancerous tumor. And many more people were in the O.R. virtually following along. Reactions from Twitter users from other states and other continents included "fascinating" and "eeewww!"

Dr. Craig Rogers told CNN that they were looking to Twitter to help spread information. In this case, he wanted to get the word out that this procedure could be done without removing an entire kidney. But there's more to the surgery tweets - they are full of drama. In order to have a successful surgery, doctors need to restrict the amount of time a clamp is in place - no longer than 30 minutes. So with a "25 minutes left!!!" tweet, the surgeons kept their audience rapt.

Read the full article on CNN.

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