Robotic Surgery

Robotic Surgery

What is robotic surgery?

Robotic surgery is the use of computers and robotics to perform medical surgery. It was developed to enhance the effectiveness, and overcome the limitations, of human surgery. Robotic surgery is usually associated with minimally invasive surgery. Minimally invasive surgery is surgery that is performed using very small, precise incisions. A robot can be more consistently precise than a human hand, making them the ideal candidates for performing minimally invasive surgery. However robots are also sometimes used for more invasive types of surgery such as open heart surgery.

History

The concept of robots has been around for a very long time. The first practically used robots were developed in the 1950s

Using highly sophisticated mechanical engineering, a robot can make extremely tiny movements. These robotic movements have made minimally invasive surgery much more viable. This increased precision is not only helpful during the actual surgery. It also decreases the amount of post-surgery pain felt by the patient and causes smaller, less noticeable surgical scars. Robotic surgery typically takes less time than traditional surgery. This means less chance of fatigue for the surgical team. Also, patients will be able to get in and out of surgery at an increased rate, allowing for more patients to be attended to in a shorter amount of time. During robotic surgery, fewer people are needed in the operating room, sometimes none at all. This drastically reduces the chance of post-surgical infection. Remote surgery presents a number of benefits as well. Sometimes a specialist is needed for a specific type of surgery. Often there is not enough time for the specialist to travel to where he or she is needed, and often it is dangerous to move the patient. Remote surgery makes it possible for the surgeons to help patients from very far distances away. When more hospitals across the world are capable of remote robotic surgery, people all over the world will be able to receive the surgery they need in a timely

The number of patents applied for and issued to robotic surgery technologies has been steadily increasing since the 1980s. There are a number of ways the field is advancing.

Increased Precision- Engineers continue to work to make robotic surgeons as precise as possible. Recently a robot arm was made that has such a high level of precision, it was able to remove a section of the skin of a grape and sew it back on perfectly without the damaging the grape in any way.

Force feedback- When a surgeon is using a telemanipulator to perform surgery by proxy, they can tell the robot arm what to do but they can’t feel the pressure and other tactile sensations they normally would. With increasing advances in force feedback technology, all the tactile sensations that the robot arm “feels” via sensors will be transferred back to the surgeon’s telemanipulator. This will allow the surgeon to perform the procedure is though they were actually in the operating room, without any of the associated risks of