Word: robotical
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...million da Vinci robot, made by Intuitive Surgical, is a modern twist on an older technique known as "keyhole" surgery, in which surgeons use elongated chopstick-like tools teamed with a tiny camera to work inside the body. But "keyhole" surgery is counterintuitive: to move the instrument's tip to the left, the surgeon has to push the handle to the right - and vice versa. Despite the advantages to the patient, only about one-quarter of the 15 million operations performed each year in the U.S. are done this way. The da Vinci takes the tools out of the surgeon...
...pink surfaces and gloopy fat. Across the room, lead surgeon Barry Gardiner sits at a console with his head pressed into a 3D viewfinder. His fingers, looped into what look like castanets, dart about just above his lap. But the action is taking place inside the patient, where metal robot "hands" inserted through the ports follow every move of Gardiner's: sewing, clamping, cutting. "It's like being able to shrink my hands and put them places they'd never fit," the surgeon says...
...Vinci is a descendant of a U.S. Department of Defense project in the 1980s to create a robot that would allow surgeons to operate on critically wounded soldiers from a safe distance, or even perform emergency surgery on astronauts on Mars. The scientists envisioned easily deployed surgical units that would save lives. But while the need for careful setup of the patient and machine and the chaos of trauma surgery have yet to make that possible, non-emergency surgery over great distances is already happening. In 1998 a doctor from Baltimore assisted on a robotic operation in Singapore from...
...Mention robotic surgery and people typically envision a C3P0 in pale green scrubs, leaning over and digitally intoning: "This won't hurt a bit." It's not quite as cool as that. The robot Gardiner uses at San Ramon Regional Medical Center, in a grassy suburb an hour outside of San Francisco, is a gray-and-black three-armed wonder connected to a console that doesn't have anything witty to say. It looks exactly like what it is: a machine. But by allowing doctors to access and see parts of the body as never before - without large, open incisions...
...robot is also being tested on more difficult surgery, including heart bypasses and heart-valve replacements. These procedures are performed through three incisions, each about the diameter of a pen, instead of cracking open the chest. With a less invasive approach, they promise benefits in patient recovery and lower costs for post-op care. The da Vinci's ability to perform precise movements in tiny spaces - without trembling like a tired surgeon might - could allow better microsurgery, preventing debilitating nerve damage...