Client: Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
Medium: Animation
Mitrofanoff Support part of Great Ormond Street Hospital
We were commissioned by the charitable Organisation Mitrofanoff Support part of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children to create a patient education video to help explain a procedure called Mitrofanoff. For any patient, especially children, it is key before any surgery that the child and the child’s parents understand the procedure and this is usually best achieved with visuals such as medical animations. When creating patient education materials it is possible as part of that process to neutralise any scary medical matters and enable a child to watch the content without fear or prejudice. This is the ideal way for a child to learn medical procedures and terminology as they are not frightened by what they see but rather get to understand and become less fearful about their operation.
What is Mitrofanoff Procedure
The Mitrofanoff procedure also known as the Mitrofanoff appendicovesicostomy, is a surgical procedure in which the appendix is used to create a conduit between the skin surface and the urinary bladder to permit bladder drainage where voiding or urethral self-catheterisation is not possible. The technique has been named after its developer, Paul Mitrofanoff.
Children who are incontinent may benefit from this procedure. It allows the bladder to be emptied several times a day, reducing the chance of the bladder leaking urine. It can be psychologically easier and physically less uncomfortable to insert a catheter into the Mitrofanoff rather than the urethra.
Mitrofanoff Support works with Healthcare Professionals and Hospital Trusts to help improve the education of what it is like to live with a Mitrofanoff from a patients’ perspective.
The animation is to be used by the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) London UK which as part of its patient education program and is an international center of excellence in child healthcare.
Medical Animation Project Brief
The commission was to create a replica of an existing animation demonstrating the Mitrofanoff appendicovesicostomy procedure but creating with an adult’s anatomy, as the hospital already had a child’s anatomy version. The procedure is the same for either an adult or a child, but the new animation also needed to look more current and up to date than the existing animation with realism anatomy. A glass figure was chosen to represent the androgynous figure to exaggerate the fact the we were looking inside the body.
The animation was required to be supplied as a QuickTime movie (.mov) sized for a High Definition (1920×1080 pixels) and with a running time as per the child animation so that when it was included in the end video the voiceover could be matched.