EAES Winter Symposium

The European Association for Endoscopic Surgery renewed its former tradition to give a half-day open symposium to discuss recent issues, challenges and opportunities in modern MIS technology. This year, the meeting was on January 16, in Brussels. The program included 3 invited lectures from high-profile robotics surgery professionals.  

• Session 1. Robotic Surgery beyond 3D and 7DOF Sir Alfred Cuschieri, UK

Sir Alfred gave a very up-to-date overview of the state of the art regarding da Vinci surgery, he explained his own concerns and wishes for further system development. Recently, he visited Titan Medical in Canada, and according to his opinion, already the current version of the Amadeus prototype is really fine, and very promising. (Now they are developing a human hand-like small-manipulator for the slave side.) He also talked about some long anticipated development in materials sciences, motors, electronics and sensing. He called for operational policies for the cost effective use of surgical robots.

• Session 2. Da Vinci surgery : realism after the preliminary enthusiasm Guy Cadière, Belgium

 Dr. Cadière talked about the early years of the research, when they were developing master-slave systems for telesurgery even before the da Vinci system. Their group was therefore a natural location for the very first clinical trial. He explained that the only randomized clinical trial with the da Vinci was in Mexico, 1998; involving 120 patients. (Ed.: Second opinion, anyone?)

• Session 3. Novel robotic systems integrated with novel imaging platforms - the smart operation of the future? Andreas Melzer, UK

At last, Andreas Melzer talked about various research initiatives across Europe to push the frontiers of MIS robotics.

In the lunch break, the ALF-X Telelap system was introduced by its developers. (See prior posts here and here.)