Health

Robot Surgery: Successful

by Jordan Yerman | May 18, 2008 at 06:18 am

322 views | 20 Recommendations | 3 comments

Surgeons in Calgary have successfully removed a young woman's brain tumour using a remote-control robot, taking advantage of the device's ability to move in smaller increments than is possible for humans.

Doctors used remote controls and an imaging screen, similar to a video game, to guide the two-armed robot through Paige Nickason's brain during the nine-hour surgery Monday.

Surgical instruments acting as the hands of the robot -called NeuroArm - provided surgeons with the tools needed to successfully remove the egg-shaped tumour.

On its first day on the job, the neuroArm successfully removed a benign tumour from a patient. Not a bad start to what researchers hope is a lengthy career.

Its inventors claim it has a steadier hand than a human doctor. One developer, neurosurgeon Dr. Garnette Sutherland, held the controls as the 'bot performed the procedure.

The patient, a 21-year-old mother, was pleased with the results.

(found via Slashdot)

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Barry ORegan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:45 on May 18th, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff. I read about this today, Awesome developments, humans are just not as stable as a robot, hand shaking, a sudden sneeze or involuntary twitch by a surgeon can have fatal results when performing Micro Surgery. Robots on the other hand do not have intelligent thought and logic like humans, so melding the two makes it a perfect combination in medical science. Many of my clients state, I should be a Doctor, saying I have the one important prerequisite. My unintelligable Handwriting skills. Somehow Medical schools didn't see that Logic.