I just learned of OR-live, a site that shows tapes of surgeons performing surgery and includes running commentary from physicians.
You can browse the site's archives by its 17 separate specialities, such as, for instance, cardiovascular/cardiothoracic, gastroenterology, neurological/neurosurgical, obgyn, and orthopaedics. You can also browse the archives by the name of the institution where the surgery was performed and by the date it was performed.
The neurological/neurosurgical archive listing includes, for example, links to a herniated disc repair using a microdiscectomy technique, an anterior approach cervical discectomy with fusion, and a mini-open antero-lumbar interbody fusion.
Procedures in the archives for the urology specialty include a hernia repair and a radical prostatectomy by robotic surgery to remove a cancerous prostate.
You may also hear comments from the surgeons and from other physicians before, during and after the procedures. In addition, you may also hear questions from other physicians while the surgery is proceeding.
As an example of what you can find, if you go to the page for a webcast of the cervical discectomy, you will see that the procedure was performed in 2004 and that you can view the entire webcast, or, if you prefer, just preview the webcast or just see and hear the doctor comments. If you choose the entire procedure, the webcast lasts two hours and six minutes and includes both video and related slides in side by side windows.
LINKS:
ORlive: http://www.or-live.com/
Archives by category: http://www.or-live.com/archives.cfm
Cervical discectomy: http://www.or-live.com/aurora/1150/
Neurological/neurosurgical archives: http://www.or-live.com/archives.cfm?browseby=specialty&id=10
Urology archives: http://www.or-live.com/archives.cfm?browseby=specialty&id=3