Robotic Surgery

Raven42rac writes "Interestling article on my local newspaper's website dealing with a remote controlled, voice controlled, three dimensional surgery assisting robot."

Comments

Very useful

[NMerriam]

We use these at work and they are very good -- Intuitive Surgical and Computer Motion both have systems that are getting use in ORs all over the place.

The only drawback is the cost and training, but once you've spent the million dollars to get it, you open up a lot of opportunities for surgical education and easing the burdon on doctors (as well as removing all notions of "distance" from the question of timely assistance).

For those wondering about the voice control, it only recognizes a dozen commands, and is totally speaker-independant. You'd say "Aesop...Move in" and it will move the camera in a few millimeters. The nice thing is that you can save positions and pricisely jump back and forth at looking in different areas in a half-second. It does have pressure sensors, so you can't do too much acidentally.

Also, realize that sometimes you can spend literally 16+ hours on one surgery -- having the robot do the direct manipulation means you can switch surgeons every few hours or get up and walk around without letting go of the surgical instruments and possibly abrading something while handing them off.

After watching a few dozen of these surgeries, i'd honestly say that i'd rather have my gall bladder removed by hermes/aesop/Zeus/daVinci than by a surgeon's hands...