French Doctors to Perform Zero-Gravity Surgery

STFS writes "NewScientistSpace has a story about a team of French doctors who will attempt the worlds first zero-gravity operation on a human aboard an Airbus A300 dubbed "Zero-G". The patient, according to forbes.com, was chosen because of his experience with 'dramatic gravitational shifts' as an avid bungee-jumper. The operation will serve as a test for performing surgery in space."

Comments

If thats like the Vomit Comet...

[patio11]

... I predict some serious mishaps for all involved. The Vomit Comet is a NASA plane which they use to simulate 0G conditions by the simple expedient of taking the plane up really high and then flying it towards the ground, then pulling up and repeating. As I recall the cycle between weightless and "really freaking heavy" takes about 60 seconds, with about half of that time being weightless. Any more and the plane ends up as NASA's 453rd "premature interface of craft and planet". So the surgery would be stopping and starting constantly, and as most surgeries aren't five-minute affairs I can imagine that would be a little irksome.

Re:ISS

[tftp]

They don't do it on ISS likely because it makes no sense. They do other medical experiments there, less risky and not so newsworthy - but probably more valuable. Like surgery on rats, for example (I remember something like that being announced some time ago.)

TFA mentions an accident during a low spaceflight. Well, read Baxter's "Titan" for example. But if you are not suicidal enough for that, it might be enough to note that all space crews are trained in medicine; often one crewmember is a doctor, and everyone else is good enough to help.

Another issue is that you can't compare 30-second drops and 9-minute climbs, with gravity swinging from 0 to 2G, and a quiet, stable zero gravity of a spacecraft. Who can do *anything* well in a Vomit Comet? This stunt has no value.

Re:Animals first?

[NMerriam]

If these guys really wanted to experiment (and it is an experiment) with low-gravity surgery they would be doing it on animals long before human trials.

It has been done on animals. I worked with a NASA surgical research group for years and one of the many projects we did was surgical simulation (both computer with haptic feedback and with traditional box simulators) in microgravity. Other groups did surgical procedures on animals in microgravity. We've flown every possible piece of the puzzle, many times. This is the logical next step, and yes it is experimental, but that's what researchers do.

There are many things that could go wrong, and no doubt they'll tell the pilot to level the plane if that happens. Being in control of the gravity makes it a lot safer than trying it for the first time in an emergency aboard the space station. Sooner or later this has to be done -- I admit when I first heard this story on the news, I was hoping it was my old group doing it.