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Surgical Robots Cut Training Time Down From 80 Sessions To 30 Minutes (theguardian.com)
From a report: It is the most exacting of surgical skills: tying a knot deep inside a patient's abdomen, pivoting long graspers through keyhole incisions with no direct view of the thread. Trainee surgeons typically require 60 to 80 hours of practice, but in a mock-up operating theatre outside Cambridge, a non-medic with just a few hours of experience is expertly wielding a hook-shaped needle -- in this case stitching a square of pink sponge rather than an artery or appendix.
The feat is performed with the assistance of Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot, which could be used in NHS operating theatres for the first time later this year if approved for clinical use. Versius is one of a handful of advanced surgical robots that are predicted to transform the way operations are performed by allowing tens or hundreds of thousands more surgeries each year to be carried out as keyhole procedures. The Versius robot cuts down the time required to learn to tie a surgical knot from more than 100 training sessions, when using traditional manual tools, to just half an hour, according to Slack.
The feat is performed with the assistance of Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot, which could be used in NHS operating theatres for the first time later this year if approved for clinical use. Versius is one of a handful of advanced surgical robots that are predicted to transform the way operations are performed by allowing tens or hundreds of thousands more surgeries each year to be carried out as keyhole procedures. The Versius robot cuts down the time required to learn to tie a surgical knot from more than 100 training sessions, when using traditional manual tools, to just half an hour, according to Slack.
As someone who needs surgery in the deranged health care system in Quebec, anything that can remove these arrogant human doctors from the loop and make surgery perhaps a nurse-practitioner thing is GOOD.
I've had it with the arrogant ignorant incompetent condescending doctors that fill the system here and anything that can threaten their hegemony is GOOD.
Bring on the AI diagnosis, remote-viewed autosurgery please.
Anything to kick these complacent doctor's asses!
Mostly random stuff.
If anyone read the summary and is wondering why Slack is mentioned as an authority here, Slack is the last name of one of the doctors involved, not a crappy IRC replacement.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot,
Still under development: Nano Doctor ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Derp!
Cutting and sewing is the easiest part of being a surgeon. Knowing when and where to cut, what to sew, and what to do when you cut or sew the wrong thing - that's what's hard about it.
I'm an anesthesiologist. i've watched a lot of surgeries, and I could do a few of them - if I had a surgeon on the phone to walk me through them. There's a reason that a general surgery residency is five years long, and it's not because it takes that long to learn how to tie a knot.
The purpose is to create a social narative that they all work hard and know things you don't and maybe can't, professionalism is just credentialism, it is mostly fraud to steal your money and your time, doctors lawyer all of it.
most people are better off doing a search on pubmed than getting the opinion of their doctor.
hours do not represent competance.
Standing. Standing long hours. With a leak in your Depend undergarment. With A LEAK IN YOUR DEPEND UNDERGRAMENT!
this is what they should be talking about. Robot helpers that take high skilled jobs and make them rather trivial. I saw this with wood workers too. I used to do IT work for a cabinet company where nobody was a carpenter. They had a CNC machine and they punched measurements into it and it cut the wood to the right shape. Then a couple of guys with screwdrivers would install it.
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and they're getting better every day. Eventually we'll have Star Wars style medical droids. If our civilization doesn't regress I'd say within 100 years tops.
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Your comment does not surprise me at all.
It reminds me of people who mistakenly think that learning the vocabulary words of programming (a programming language) makes one a professional programmer. Lile most subjects, learning the vocabulary words (language) is rather a prerequisite to learning the art and science of what it's used for.
In my field, reducing the time required to learn the mechanics means people can instead spend that time on learning the hard parts. Some languages are very consistent, and rather small, so they are easy to learn. Some are inconsistent, with functions like AddArray() paired with array_remove(). Time spent memorizing the eccentricities of the language is time not spent learning design patterns, or anti-patterns, or algorithmic analysis.
I suppose if surgeons can spend 60 less hours learning to tie a knot blindfolded, they can instead spend that time learning something else.
As someone who needs surgery in the deranged health care system in Quebec, anything that can remove these arrogant human doctors from the loop and make surgery perhaps a nurse-practitioner thing is GOOD.
You had a healthcare system?
We used to *dream* of having a healthcare system!
(Still do, actually...)
Doctors and experts who cant work an ER.
How to do a great ER:
A day and night, all weather helicopter service. Educate your helicopter crews to fly at night.
An ambulance service with experts.
That gets a nations citizens to the best hospitals in shorter time.
Once in such a hospital all doctors and staff should be selected on merit. Did not pass your exams to the best standards and cant study and learn? Try a different area of medicine.
A university system should only accept a nations very best to become doctors and specialists. Not a citizen and want to work? Pass the same exams to the same top level.
A nation that now needs tens or hundreds of thousands more surgeries on a set number of citizens has a problem.
Why are so many people in a nation getting so sick so often that a normal number of medical graduates cant cover?
Where are the extra tens or hundreds of thousands more surgeries needed? Who or what is adding to that work load every year vs past decades?
Find some top experts and look back over and study that epidemiology. Is an entire nation of healthy normal people getting more sick inner ways every year?
Some clusters of constant budget pressure by groups in the community?
What has changed with a set population size of normal healthy citizens able to access free health care that has changed to needed so much more intervention every year?
Teaching hospitals should be able to graduate the best experts every year to keep up an average healthy population growth.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Socialized medicine is good for innovation. Meanwhile, in the United States, the cost of prescription drugs has gone up again after President Trump announced new policies that would bring down drug prices.
America, you played yourself.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/re...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have no doubt that when this device is used, the license will be something along the lines of $100 per stitch. This will get billed to insurance, which will then either be declined or reduced, then the recipient is on the hook for the rest. I love the health care system in the good-ole USA.
Yes. BSD really went down hill. Never thought it would come to this, but BSD died a slow ugly death.
Surgical robots are electro-mechanical systems that are manually controlled by the doctor using controllers. They dampen movements to turn human hand movements into finely controlled robotic movements. This isn't Star Wars and surgical droids don't perform the operation autonomously. For the google-impaired: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I would have thought that a robot would find it easier to fuse the suture with heat or maybe bond it with glue or otherwise fasten it without using a knot.
Nullius in verba
As someone who needs surgery in the deranged health care system in Quebec, anything that can remove these arrogant human doctors from the loop and make surgery perhaps a nurse-practitioner thing is GOOD.
Tell me that again when you are coding on the operating table. You don't need a surgeon for many routine surgeries. That's not why you want a surgeon. The value of a surgeon is for when something unexpected or particularly serious happens. And the fun thing about operations is that you never quite know when that is going to happen. So go right ahead and have someone less qualified do your surgery and pray nothing goes wrong. Frankly I think the arrogant one here is you.
I've had it with the arrogant ignorant incompetent condescending doctors that fill the system here and anything that can threaten their hegemony is GOOD.
As opposed to the arrogant, know nothing, rude patients that think they know more about medicine than the people actually trained in the practice of it. Let me guess, some doctor had the nerve to actually tell you you were wrong about something or *gasp* made a mistake. Medicine is one of the most difficult and complicated human endeavors and we've been wildly successful at it. No doctors aren't perfect and it is unreasonable to expect them to be, particularly if you have a challenging condition. The human body is too complicated and our technology is too primitive for that to be a realistic expectation.
Bring on the AI diagnosis, remote-viewed autosurgery please.
How about a Star Trek tricoder while you are invoking science fiction?
Knowing when and where to cut, what to sew, and what to do when you cut or sew the wrong thing - that's what's hard about it.
Sounds like something that would be easy for a computer, if it has the data. Inventing new procedures and methods is another matter, hopefully when the day comes the machine doesn't decide it's best to grab a replacement part from the anesthesiologist.
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1) At this time and for the foreseeable few years. Robotic surgery for the most part it is a hyped up gimmick. Especially when a competent surgeon can do the same laparoscopically in less time, smaller incisions, and much cheaper. Only a few specific cases where it has merits. 2) There is no such thing as âoesimple surgeryâ. All surgery has an inherent risk and the number of deaths attributable to any specific surgery is greater than ZERO. 3) Everyone can be trained to tie a knot, but not everyone can become a competent surgeon.
installing update. Windows 10 will now reboot.......... Licence manager error, please call Tech support during bussiness hours. Thank you.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Two things occur to me as I read about this.
It isn't 'robotic surgery'. It's robot-assisted surgery. There's still a trained human performing the surgery itself. The intention is to perform more types of surgery using less invasive, time consuming processes.
The other thing is the concern that the doctors won't be able to perform the surgeries in this manner if they don't have the robot assistance if that's the only way they've been trained to do it.
Overall the concept is great - less stress on the patient, less expensive surgery, ability to perform more surgeries which reduces wait times. The implications of being completely dependent on the robot to do the procedures this way is scary.
Sounds like something that would be easy for a computer
Not really. The variation in human anatomy from person to person is substantial, even before you account for the changes that are due to prior surgical interventions. Not saying that it's impossible, but self-driving cars are a far simpler problem.