Robotic Telesurgery by Remote Surgeons

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a few years, telesurgery performed by multi-armed robots remotely controlled by real surgeons located hundreds or thousands of kilometers away will become commonplace. Today, Canadian doctors from the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) are developing the technology for NASA. Their goal is to build a portable robotic unit that would be used in space missions, war zones and remote areas within five years. So far, the experiments already done in Canada and for NASA are extremely encouraging. But read more for additional details and pictures of a real surgeon controlling such a robot."

How are they different from these guys...

[joecm]

http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/ [intuitivesurgical.com]

Advantages and disadvantages...

[kcbrown]

Advantages: robotics can be extremely precise. If programmed properly, it can compensate for any twitchiness on the part of the operator.

But the disadvantages are significant: the feel isn't the same as performing the surgery for real. Now, for certain types of surgery that problem isn't a problem, but the human hand is actually quite sensitive to pressures and other types of feedback that I'm sure are quite invaluable to a surgeon (IANAS, however). A machine can provide some of that feedback through the link but the amount of feedback will be limited by the sensory capability of the machine.

So, like many things, I can see this being useful for a relatively limited set of surgical operations, while for others "being there" will remain necessary.

That said, if I have to choose between having this and having nothing at all (a battlefield comes to mind for such a situation), I'd rather have this and I'll take my chances with the limitations...

Re:How are they different from these guys...

[iminplaya]

September 7, 2001 - ZEUS robotic system developed by Computer Motion was used in the trans-Atlantic operation. A doctor in New York removed the diseased gallbladder of a 68-year-old patient in Strasbourg, France.

Apparently these guys are. I believe this [pbs.org] is the story you heard...

da vinci system

[VoidEngineer]

For more information on telerobotic surgery systems (they're a few years old now):

http://www.teleroboticsurgeons.com/ [teleroboticsurgeons.com]
http://www.teleroboticsurgeons.com/davinci.htm [teleroboticsurgeons.com]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1471286 6 [nih.gov]