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Experts Foresee Increase In Robotic Surgeries

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 November 2008, 13:50 CST

Researchers foresee the future of surgery may involve minimally invasive robots to perform traditional operations.

However, the development of these robots will not be cheap. The average selling price of the market-leading da Vinci system from California's Intuitive Surgical Inc is $1.35 million.

Experts predict machines will be used to penetrate deeper into ailing bodies in the years ahead.

One robot, for example, resembles a mechanical snake, and enters the human body through natural orifices to perform surgeries.

The natural orifice "I-snake" camera and surgery system, which would do away with the need for incisions altogether, is further down the track. Research teams hope to have oral or rectal access system ready for tests within 3-1/2 years.

Some critics, including British fertility expert Robert Winston, have questioned the cost-effectiveness of robots when other treatments, such as cancer drugs, are being rationed.

But backers of the robotic surgery movement say prices will inevitably fall as usage and competition increase, as happened with once-costly computers.

Right now, men who need prostate operations are the largest group to be involved in robotic surgeries. Doctors say although it is sometimes a hard sell, surgeries by robotic knife usually translate to less trauma, quicker recovery and less risk of impotence.

"It's not the easiest concept to describe to a patient," said surgeon Ara Darzi, co-director of the Hamlyn Center for Robotic Surgery at Imperial College London and a British government health minister responsible for patient care.

"Patients need to be reassured that this is not a machine operating independently. This is an enabling machine," he said.

Darzi and others who use the system are given complete control over the robot’s movements. They sit at the controls to direct the robot's multi-jointed pincers inside the patient's body.

"This is the tip of the iceberg -- this is the first car ever invented," said Darzi. "There is a huge amount of work in this field which will significantly enhance the ability of the surgeon to provide a much more precise, accurate procedure."

One new approach, known as eye-tracking, uses the surgeon's gaze to direct tools by tracking the light reflected from the user's eyes, making operations simpler and less invasive.

Another possibility is artificially stabilizing the image of moving organs, such as a beating heart, by creating robotic instruments that move in tandem with the patient's body.

"Currently, robots are used in relatively simple procedures," said Guang-Zhong Yang, joint head of the Imperial unit. "But in future, you will see them used in more advanced procedures, like beating-heart surgery."

Other firms are closing in on new minimally invasive techniques as well.

In May this year, doctors at the University of Calgary in Canada used a robot called neuroArm to remove a tumor from a 21-year-old woman's brain in the first operation of its kind.

Privately held U.S. firm Satiety Inc, meanwhile, is testing a stomach stapler for obese patients that slides down the throat rather than requiring abdominal surgery.

Researchers at Germany's DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics are working on a lightweight system called MIRO using the same robotic arm technology as is used in space.

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On the Net:

• Intuitive Surgical Inc

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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