Article intro - Force Feedback technology in the da Vinci 5
"Force Feedback technology allows surgeons to feel the forces applied to tissue during surgery, such as pushing and pulling. These studies - conducted in the pre-clinical setting using tissue models - demonstrate its potential to reduce the amount of force placed on tissue during surgery and enhance surgeon performance.
The first study, led by a team including Michael M. Awad MD, PhD, Professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, showed that using Force Feedback technology can lead to a reduction in force on tissue by up to 43 percent, irrespective of the surgeon’s experience level. The study evaluated the forces applied to surgical models by 28 surgeons who had varying levels of experience when using Force Feedback technology during retraction, dissection, and suturing tasks.
“The lack of a way to measure the forces applied to tissue may result in excessive force exerted, leading to unintentional tissue damage during surgery, which could have a negative clinical impact on patients including pain and recovery time,” said Dr. Awad.
“Our findings suggest that Force Feedback technology using the da Vinci 5 system could enable gentler robotic surgery. While there's more to learn about how this technology might translate to clinical outcomes, it's a strong step toward improvement in robotic procedures.”
During robotic-assisted surgery, surgeons operate instruments through the da Vinci surgeon console and rely on visual cues to determine the force they are applying to tissue. Even during open surgery, where surgeons have access to their sense of touch, they still have no way of measuring the amount of force applied to tissue during the procedure.
The second study, led by a team including Andrew J. Hung, MD, Associate Professor of Urology and Computational Biomedicine, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, showed that Force Feedback technology has the potential to improve novice surgeon performance by significantly reducing tissue trauma and errors during suturing, and time to complete suturing.
“Suturing can be a unique challenge during robotic surgery because excessive force can break delicate sutures or injure healthy tissue, while insufficient forces might cause slippage or loose sutures,” said Dr. Hung. “Force Feedback could enhance the performance of surgeons and their suturing proficiency during robotic surgery. Now that we have seen how Force Feedback has enabled novice surgeons in the pre-clinical setting, we look forward to better understanding the impact on surgical performance and potential patient benefits.”
The study evaluated the impact of Force Feedback technology on the suturing performance of 29 novice surgeons in a randomized pre-clinical study.
“These studies show early, pre-clinical and compelling evidence of the potential impact of Force Feedback technology across all surgeon experience levels,” said Intuitive Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Myriam Curet.
Force Feedback technology is currently in use by a limited number of hospitals in the United States. Intuitive continues to study its use with customers and grow availability through 2025 and beyond."
- Awad MM, Raynor MC, Padmanabhan-Kabana M, Schumacher LY, Blatnik JA. Evaluation of forces applied to tissues during robotic-assisted surgical tasks using a novel force feedback technology. Surg Endosc 38, 6193–6202 (2024).
- Servais EL, Rashidi L, Porwal P, Garibaldi M, Hung AJ. Novel force feedback technology improves suturing in robotic-assisted surgery: a pre-clinical study. Surg Endosc. 2025;39(2):1217-1226.
Source: Intuitive
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