Not so long ago, the idea of human robotic surgery came from a science fiction. Today, it’s everyday. According to US surgeons, robotic surgery increased from 1.8% to 15% of all surgeries from 2012 to 2018.
Currently, it is used in about 22% of surgeries, according to some estimates. And it’s no wonder this method keeps up. Robotic surgery (more precisely called robot-assisted surgery) reduces bleeding, shortens the time in the hospital, and reduces the recovery time with less pain.
Easier and pain-relieving surgery
The “robot” of robotic surgery is actually a very sophisticated machine operated by highly trained and experienced surgeons. Usually, the surgeon sits on the console and remotely operates a robotic arm that holds a small surgical instrument (yes, the console looks like a video game controller).
One of the arms holds a camera that gives the surgeon a high-resolution enlarged view of the surgical site. Surgeons sit on the console rather than crouching over the incision, but have a better vision of the surgical world. Robotics allow surgeons to operate comfortably in very restrictive locations, such as the pelvis where the mitral valve is located or the left atrium.
“You can run the camera into your mind and see exactly where you’re cutting, but with an open surgery you can look at the tiny little hole and try to look at it.” man, Director of minimally invasive and robotic cardiac surgery at the Georgia Heart Institute.
“It’s more like eating with a fork, knife and spoon than using chopsticks,” he says. “It just gives you more abilities and makes it easier to operate.”
read more: How small bubbles can supply medicine to the brain
Faster surgery recovery time
Robotic surgery is easy for patients too.
“You don’t open their skeletons. You didn’t look at their skulls in half. You don’t break the ribs. You secretly fix their problems in your chest,” says Guy. “And that leads to faster recovery.”
While surgeons always prioritize safety and efficacy, robotic surgery adds a new element: patient satisfaction. “Speed recovery is important for patients,” he says. Of course, survival of operations is paramount, and it is also important that the operations are effective and durable, Guy says. “But for patients it’s important not to be sidelined for a long period of time.”
Guy was a pioneer in this field and had experience in the US Army’s technology (robotic surgery grew from darpa (Project), then launches five different robotic surgery programs across the country.
“I’m like a gadget guy, so I was hooked on robots,” he recalls. And it is the gadgets who have undergone robotic surgery, from fringes to mainstream. Many older surgeons never really embraced the idea of minimally invasive surgery of any kind. “But now they’re retired and you have a younger generation who grew up on iPhones and video games.
Tomorrow’s medical treatment
Robotic surgery is becoming more widely popular, and is becoming more sophisticated. Earlier this year, Victor Chien, a plastic surgeon at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, led the team that performed the first robotic microsurgery in the United States to reconstruct head and neck cancer.
The robotic system allowed Chien and his team to manipulate blood vessels thinner than human hair. On the other side of the continent, cardiothoracic surgeon Stephanie H. Chan led a team at New York University’s Langone in New York to perform the world’s first fully robotic double lung transplant.
Will the robots work independently one day? It may not be as far as it looks. A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University has developed an autonomous robot (autonomous robot or star in a smart organization) that successfully performed a pig’s abdominal surgery without the help of a human.
“There’s no doubt that there will be robots that do autonomous functions rather than the entire operation, but in the end they’ll do certain things,” Guy says. “I don’t think much of it as a robot doing someone’s procedures and as a partnership between a human surgeon and a robotic system. I might be able to do that [do] Some are superior to humans because they have the ability to process information more quickly. ”
read more: The world of primitive brain surgery
article sauce
Our author discovermagazine.com Our articles use peer-reviewed research and high-quality sources, and editors review scientific accuracy and editing criteria. Check out the sources used below in this article.
Avery Hart is a freelance science journalist. In addition to writing for Discover, she regularly writes about a variety of outlets, both printed and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. She is the author of Bullet who has your name. What You Probably Die, and What You Can Do About It, Clerisy Press 2007, and some books for younger readers. While attending university, Avery started out in journalism, writing for the school’s newspapers and editing student non-fiction magazines. Although she writes about all fields of science, she is particularly interested in AI-interests that developed while earning degrees in neuroscience, science of consciousness, and philosophy.
