Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
Robot Surgeons
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was installed at
Ohio State University, the first such system in the United States. In the
few years since then, several hundred of the $1.5 million da Vincis have
come off the assembly line in Sunnyvale, California, helping to make its
manufacturer, Intuitive Surgical, Inc., to become one of the fastest grow-
ing companies in Silicon Valley. In this most demanding area of medical
science, robots are now the latest must-have equipment for many lead-
ing hospitals, particularly in the U.S.A., and the statistics on operations
performed with the help of robots explain why. A clinical trial sponsored
by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
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found that patients who
underwent prostate surgery in which the human surgeons used the da
Vinci robot, were 90 percent less likely to become incontinent after the
procedure and 50 percent less likely to become impotent. They were also
three times more likely to have
negative margins
on their prostate, i.e., a
more effective cancer operation.
The da Vinci robot system revolutionizes a process called Minimally
Invasive Surgery (MIS). In conventional MIS, the surgeon manipulates
a long, thin camera called a laparoscope and a few other thin surgical
instruments through
ports
—tiny incisions in the body. The laparoscope,
although it has the advantage of limiting the size of the incisions a sur-
geon needs to make, also limits the surgeon's visibility because the image
conveyed by the device is two-dimensional. The process also limits the
surgeon's flexibility and dexterity because the long-shafted operating in-
struments are rigid and have no articulation.
The da Vinci's camera provides the (human) surgeon with a high
quality, magnified, three-dimensional view of the operation, enabling the
surgeon to see as well as if he was himself inside the patient. The system's
three or four robotic arms are used to pierce the patient's body through
extremely small, hand-made incisions. With these arms the surgeon re-
motely manipulates tiny scissors, clamps and other surgical instruments
designed to mimic the accomplishments of human hands, wrists and
fingers. In this way the surgeon's natural hand and wrist movements
are translated into precise movements by the surgical instruments, which
can be twisted and manoeuvred by the surgeon with great precision. And
In August 1999 a robot surgery system called da Vinci
R
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Da Vinci is a registered trade mark of Intuitive Surgical, Inc.
9
The FDA is a federal agency in the U.S. Department of Health, that tests and regulates the
release of new foods and health-related products.
