Slashdot Mirror
NASA Performs Zero-G Robot Surgery for Mars, Iraq
An anonymous reader writes "With rapid-response surgery needed in Iraq and super-long-distance medicine a far-off necessity for a manned trip to Mars, NASA recently sent eight astronauts, roboticists and surgeons on its 'Vomit Comet,' pitting real doctors against new robotic ones. As if the prospect of a portable robo-OR deploying to Iraq by 2009 weren't enticing enough, one of the surgeons on board promised this in his flight blog: 'So far, surgery by hand is still the most efficient way to get the job done in a mobile, extreme environment. But robots are advancing rapidly... The solution that roboticists are working on now is to CAT scan a patient's entire body and beam the results back to Earth. Then a surgeon could program an operation and beam it back to upload into a robo-surgeon, which could carry out procedures like a player piano.'"
"I don't know if I trust a robot to perform surgery on me.. i mean what if it crashes?"
To them I will simply remind you that whenever you go under any type of surgery if the "system crashes" you're dead or at least in big trouble. Having heart surgery? If the pumping machine dies, you go with it. Having tonsils removed? What if the thermal blade(or laser) they are using suddenly goes ape shit and burns you too hot, or misfires? You're screwed.
Point is, its more complex so more things can go wrong. HOWEVER, medical equipment is some of the most reliable and well backedup stuff around.
P.S. What the hell, robots performing surgery but still no sex slaves? god damned capitalism..
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Unfortunately unexpected things come up in surgeries.
Yeah, but it's usually anesthesiology's fault. What they REALLY need to be working on is the "robot anasthesiologist" because a 20 min delay is usually not good enough to respond to minute by minute changes in patient physiology. The surgery part is fairly mechanical and if you have excellent prior information and a very good bot, shouldn't be much of a problem. But what do you do when your "patient" develops a collapsed lung because whoever placed the endotracheal tube before the op put it just a little too far in and now the patient's saturation blood pressure is dropping fast, doctor...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Forgive me for possibly being naive, but wouldn't it possibly be a LOT more practical to simply keep a highly-skilled physician on board the mission?
After all, ocean ships have been doing this for hundreds of years. Today, Antarctic expeditions usually have a surgeon on hand, along with a minimally stocked OR, because it's virtually impossible to get anything to or from the interior regions of the continent in the wintertime.
Given that a good portion of the research NASA does is biological in nature, I imagine that there are quite a few individuals who are already qualified for this role. Sending a trained doctor to Mars seems like a no-brainer.
On the other hand, sending a CAT Scan machine up into orbit (and then to Mars) seems hilariously over the top. On the list of big and bulky machinery, CAT Scan machines are pretty high up there. Why not send a locomotive and some track up so that we can drive around on the surface once we get to Mars? After all, they're fast and energy-efficient!
On the other hand, if they were developing a similar technology, but remained focused on keeping it cheap and portable, the applications for it would be HUGE. It'd still be fantastic on the battlefield, and could also be used in remote regions (especially in developing nations) where the local population cannot support having highly-specialized doctors in their area.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
They can't be doing this in that big ol' fancy space station they got up there? Hmm, I thought this was the kind of stuff it was built for.
What?