Surgical Robot Removes Calgary Woman's Brain Tumor

Raver32 points out an article in the Victoria Times Colonist about an interesting advance in robotic surgery: "Calgary doctors have made surgical history, using a robot to remove a brain tumor from a 21-year-old woman. Doctors used remote controls and an imaging screen, similar to a video game, to guide the two-armed robot through Paige Nickason's brain during the nine-hour surgery Monday. Surgical instruments acting as the hands of the robot — called NeuroArm — provided surgeons with the tools needed to successfully remove the egg-shaped tumor."

Comments

... It's a Waldo

[Fallen Andy]

Annoys me as well, but many "industrial robots" are really remote manipulators. I always remember the first one I saw at Rolls Royce Aerospace (Bristol UK) (early 80's). So darn dangerous it had it's own room . Needed it too - they were cutting turbine blades. One oops, and it's hypersonic ninja dices and slices time... See here

(I just noticed the Waldo story reference has something which prefigures Feynmann's "Plenty of Room at the Bottom" . Wonder if he got that idea from Heinlein?

Andy

More to the point...

[jd]

...there may be some categories of "inoperable" brain tumours that are inoperable because humans have too low a level of precision. Such tumours would be removable by such a method. There have been many advances in tele-surgery since early work in the early 1990s (Surgeons in Russia operated on patients in America, for example) but this is definitely a lot further forward than might have been expected from the pioneering efforts.

This is great

[melted]

Just think how much of a boon this is for microsurgeons - folks who stitch together nerves, small blood vessels, etc. Hand tremor and even its inherent precision is no longer an issue. Plus, you can have more than two "hands". This will only get better, and eventually we'll probably see minor surgeries performed without any human intervention.

Re:More Info.

[August_zero]

I have done a surgical rotation at a facility that uses a DaVinci robot to conduct some of its gynecological/urological procedures. The surgeon still has to work at it, and for those not familiar with the system, the surgeries can take 3 times longer and are more arduous than doing it the old fashioned way. In the hands of a practiced surgeon though, it's really a sight to behold in action, almost like a giant metal spider clipping and cutting.