Surgical robotics archives
"For
the first time in medical history, doctors have used a computerized
robotic arm to help with actual surgery on the human brain, researchers
said today.
In three experimental
operations on patients in the past two months, the robot device
calculated the angles and held and directed a surgical drill and biopsy
needle while the doctors applied the pressure on the instruments to
penetrate the skull and brain, the doctors said.
''The
robotic arm is safer, faster and far less invasive than current
surgical procedures,'' said the device's inventor, Dr. Yik San Kwoh. Dr.
Kwoh, director of research in the radiology department at the Long
Beach Memorial Medical Center, where the operations were performed, said
the robotic arm's great accuracy eliminates the need for general
anesthesia, reduces trauma to the brain and allows patients to go home
the day after brain surgery instead of a week or more later.
Other
medical researchers agreed that the marriage of robotics and medicine
has many advantages, including greater speed and accuracy in surgery.
''But it doesn't yet replace the actual work of the neurosurgeon,''
which requires expert decision-making and years of experience, cautioned
Dr. John G. Frazee, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the
University of California at Los Angeles.
In
terms of what medical robots might do on their own in the future, Dr.
Frazee said, the Long Beach device ''is not anywhere close to what
people dream about.''
''But then, you have to start somewhere,'' he added."
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