Tech

Robots playing more roles in surgeries

Published

8 years ago

March 4, 2016

Robots are becoming part of our daily lives so don’t be surprised if you find one knocking at your door to deliver a package in the not-too-distant future.

But robots could be of better use especially in the medical field and Dr. Umamaheswar Duvvuri Macedonia’s border with Greece as scores of refugees remain stuck in limbo.
can testify to that fact as he has used a snake-like robot to perform more than a half dozen throat surgeries over the past month. Simply put, the robot is more accurate than Duvvuri could hope to be.
The Flex Robotic System is so easy to use, Duvvuri said even medical students can learn to use it with proficiency within three tries.

Duvvuri, director of head and neck surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), said the Flex Robotic System surgical robot he’s been using has sub-millimeter accuracy; it can “snake” its way to any place in the body and it causes less damage to soft tissue.
As far back as 2008, studies showed that patients undergoing minimally invasive heart-bypass surgery using a robot had a shorter hospital stay, faster recovery, fewer complications and a better chance that the bypassed vessels would remain open.
Last year, a Florida hospital proved robots could enable surgeons to remotely operate on patients.
The hospital, Nicholson Centre in Celebration successfully tested lagtime created by the Internet for a simulated robotic surgery in Ft. Worth, Texas, more than 1,200 miles away from the surgeon at the virtual controls. Being able to perform remote surgeries would allow specialists to attend to any patient, anywhere in the world.

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