Robots and medicine: the future is now
I’m reading every now and then about the future of robot assisted medicine. Robots have long replaced humans in routine, repetitive tasks like auto assembly, but surgery seems like a bespoke activity beyond the reach of robots. Not so.
A few years ago, I had mesh hernia repair surgery. The procedure was robotic-assisted laparoscopy. There were four small incisions in my abdomen, one at my navel. I was under general anesthesia during the operation, so I can’t say for sure what happened, but from what I’ve read, one incision is for a camera to guide the operation. One may have been for the insufflation, introducing carbon dioxide gas to create a working and viewing space by separating the abdominal wall from internal organs. Of course, a surgeon guided the procedure (or so I devoutly hope!), so the robot wasn’t on its own. So far, the results have been fine for me, and the sites of the incisions have healed indistinguishably from the surrounding skin.
How many routine surgeries are amenable to robotics? I don’t know, but I have a feeling that the precision and reliability of robots will make them worthy assistants in other surgical applications. The robotic future is upon us.
The robot will see you now
A few years ago, I had mesh hernia repair surgery. The procedure was robotic-assisted laparoscopy. There were four small incisions in my abdomen, one at my navel. I was under general anesthesia during the operation, so I can’t say for sure what happened, but from what I’ve read, one incision is for a camera to guide the operation. One may have been for the insufflation, introducing carbon dioxide gas to create a working and viewing space by separating the abdominal wall from internal organs. Of course, a surgeon guided the procedure (or so I devoutly hope!), so the robot wasn’t on its own. So far, the results have been fine for me, and the sites of the incisions have healed indistinguishably from the surrounding skin.
How many routine surgeries are amenable to robotics? I don’t know, but I have a feeling that the precision and reliability of robots will make them worthy assistants in other surgical applications. The robotic future is upon us.
The robot will see you now
But do they notice when you scream?
@Jack,
The ones that come with a duct tape dispenser do.
Is this robotics in the sense that the machine performs the operation relying on its own feedback and algorithm or is it robotic in the sense that a surgeon uses a sophisticated machine to perform the operation and provide feedback. The former would be like a self driving car, the latter like most cars nowadays using drive by wire.
@Kaleberg,
The latter.
Thanks.
Also, have you been following the surgeons who use Apple’s Vision Pro during surgery? There’s a lot of looking back and forth from the surgery site to various informational displays. The Vision Pro is quick and high resolution enough to overlay everything in 3D space. Even without overlays, it helps when the surgeon can use a virtual display side by side with the site of the action. As the article points out, the OR is full of $10K-$100K gadgets, so a $3.5K display isn’t a big deal.
@Kaleberg,
Don’t know about the software you mention, but surgeons who use the Medtronics Stealthstation have been doing that for years, beginning with intracranial surgery. It’s a technology invented by a colleague at Saint Louis University, Dr. Richard Bucholz.
Interesting.