Robot surgeons

High-tech robots perform minimally-invasive surgery with higher success rates

If you, like me, grew up watching the Jetsons, you would have expected flying cars, regular space travel, and robot maids in 2011. We may not have gotten cars in the air nor do we vacation regularly on the moon, but robots are becoming more and more common in complex fields of science.

Medicine, specifically surgery, is no exception. Robots can be constructed to be smaller and more precise than human hands to work in tiny spaces in the human body, carrying out delicate surgeries that would otherwise require an army of medical professionals and much more invasive procedures.

Robotic surgery is a minimally-invasive surgery carried out by a specifically designed robot (less Transformers and more like high-tech dental equipment) that is controlled by a surgeon who operates the robot’s arms remotely while watching the process on a monitor. Robots were first introduced into surgery during a laparoscopic cholescystecotomy performed in 1987, but it was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (more affectionately known as NASA—yes, the space folks) that developed telesurgery, the great-great-grandfather of the robots that are used for surgery today. The most commonly used surgical robot is the da Vinci Surgical System, manufactured by Intuitive Surgical.

The most important one is that the success of the surgery
increases with the flexibility and precision of the robotic arms.

The da Vinci Surgical System is made up of three components: a surgeon’s console where he can watch what is going on, a four-armed robot—one arm with an extremely efficient high-definition camera—that can be manipulated by the surgeon, and a high-definition three-dimensional vision system to accurately stimulate real surgery carried out by human hands. The arms of the da Vinci can rotate 540 degrees and in six directions, allowing them to access areas impossible to reach otherwise.

There are several advantages to robotic surgery. The most important one is that the success of the surgery increases with the flexibility and precision of the robotic arms. Furthermore there is less pain and discomfort for the patient as the incisions that are made are quite small, minimizing scarring, the length of hospitalization, and hemorrhaging. Patients can return to their regular lives more quickly than after, say, a traditionally performed mitral valve surgery. Robots also make it unnecessary to cut open the sternum to access the heart, leaving it intact and the patient without the telltale vertical scar of heart surgery.

As with all technology, there are also disadvantages to robotic surgery. Procedures carried out through robotic surgery are much more expensive than those performed by human surgeons. Secondly, surgeons have to undergo additional training to operate these complex machines competently. During the training surgery actually takes longer with the use of a robot than without, creating chaos with schedules in busy hospitals. Lastly, patients who undergo robotic surgery have much higher expectations of the results of the procedure, which leads to higher rates of disappointment and regret when the end-results don’t match their expectations precisely.

Though long-term effects of robotic surgery have yet to be studied, there is no doubt that these high-tech devices are changing the field of medicine, promising better outcomes and less trauma to the human body.

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