Dr. Robot, Report to the OR.......How true this is getting to be!!

From: Helen Dynda (olddad66@runestone.net)
Mon Jul 24 00:30:02 2000


[]>Dr. Robot, Report to the OR

http://wired.lycos.com/news/print/0,1294,20711,00.html

[ NOTE: The following article appeared in the July 23rd issue of the Minneapolis "Star Tribune" ]

>[]> Robotic surgeon is a cut above...( From the San Francisco Chronicle - by Benny Evangelista )

San Francisco--- Sitting 4 feet away from his so-called patient, Dr. Barry Gardiner deftly used his thumbs and forefingers to guide two robot arms to thread a suture in place.

Gardiner was operating on a slice of chicken breast recently to demonstrate the Da Vinci Surgical System, a cutting edge robotic device that experts say could revolutionize surgery.

"This is the first major advance in surgery since 1990," said Gardiner, a San Ramon (Calif.) Regional Medical Center surgeon who led the clinical trials of the Da Vinci system.

This month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the device, made by Intuitive Surgical Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

On July 5, surgeons at Henrico Doctors Hospital in Richmond, Va, used the da Vinci system to remove the gallbladder of 35- year-old Kimberly Briggs, who was wheeled into a news conference less than four hours after her surgery was over.

"I feel great," she told reporters, adding that the less invasive procedure would allow her to be home in time for her son Mario's sixth birthday party the next day.

The San Ramon hospital is one of four in the United States and the first on the West Coast to install the device. It is revolutionary and carries a hefty price tag of $900,000 plus continuing costs of replacing custom-designed surgical tools.

The FDA has approved the device for laparoscopic procedures such as surgeries on gall bladders or gastroesophageal-reflux disease, a severe heartburn problem.

Both the da Vinci and a rival device called the Zeus Robotic Surgical System from Computer Motion, Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., are designed to give surgeons more-precise computer-aided movements than they could achieve by hand when performing minimally invasive operations.

Both companies are seeking FDA approval for their devices to be used in cardiac surgery, particularly in "beating-heart" procedures that allow the operation to go on without stopping the heart.

Instead of traditional surgery, which causes large incisions and traumatizes the body, minimally invasive surgery has become popular in the 1990s because it requires smaller body incisions that are just large enough to insert thin tubes with surgical instruments and optical devices.

The problem is that surgeons have only a limited amount of movement possible when moving the tubes in and around the incision.

But the da Vinci, named for the famed Italian artist-inventor, attaches small, microchip-enabled surgical instruments to the ends of two thin robotic arms. That technology gives the surgeon a greater range of motion, as if the surgeon's hands were inside the patient's body.

The da Vinci has a third arm holding a camera that provides a three-dimensional video display of the operation.

The surgeon sits at a console, slips his or her thumbs and forefingers into the control rings and can move the robotic tools in any direction using the 3-D video display and a series of foot pedals.

"We're able to replicate the movement a surgeon makes at the console with the movement of the instrument tips inside the patient," said Gardiner, who conducted tests of the da Vinci in Mexico. "This solves most of the problems caused when we went from open surgery to laparoscopic surgery."

FDA Commissioner Jane Henney said in a prepared statement that the da Vinci "could change the practice of surgery."

While the da Vinci has taken time to clear FDA regulatory hurdles for commercial use in the United States, Intuitive has sold nine of the devices in Europe.

In Germany, where there is less regulation, surgeons already have performed about 1,000 operations, including minimally invasive cardiac surgeries, said Dr. Fred Moll, who co-founded Intuitive in 1995.

Although the da Vinci model in San Ramon has the console and robot arms in the same operating room, the technology could be used to enable doctors to operate on patients in the next room or thousands of miles.away.


Enter keywords:
Returns per screen: Require all keywords: