Engineering news
A surgical robot fitted with multiple arms has carried out its debut operation in England, which will make new treatments possible for the first time.
The Da Vinci XI, which is hand operated by surgeons, has the ability to make tiny and precise incisions, replacing some traditional operations which require cutting patients open and months of recovery, with far less invasive keyhole surgery.
The robot was developed by Intuitive Surgical, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California to enable “complex, multi-quadrant surgery using a minimally invasive approach”.
The Da Vinci Surgical System consists of an ergonomic surgeon console or consoles, a patient-side cart with three or four interactive arms, a high-performance 3D-HD vision system, intuitive motion and proprietary Endowment instruments. Intuitive Surgical said: “The Da Vinci Surgical System is designed to scale, filter and seamlessly translate the surgeon's hand movements into more precise movements of the EndoWrist instruments.
“The net result is an intuitive interface with advanced surgical capabilities. By providing surgeons with superior visualisation, enhanced dexterity, greater precision and ergonomic comfort compared to other surgical approaches, the system makes it possible for skilled surgeons to perform minimally invasive procedures involving complex dissection or reconstruction.”
Compared to prior Da Vinci Systems, the Da Vinci XI System's key features include: a new overhead instrument arm architecture designed to facilitate anatomical access from multiple positions, a new endoscope digital architecture that creates a simpler, more compact design with improved visual definition and clarity, an ability to attach the endoscope to any arm, providing flexibility for visualising the surgical site, smaller, thinner arms with newly designed joints that offer a greater range of motion and longer instrument shafts designed to give surgeons greater operative reach.
Surgeons at the Royal Marsden Hospital hailed the technology as pushing the boundaries in surgery, particularly in cancer care, as they completed the first operation on a patient with a tumour today.
Pardeep Kumar, consultant urological surgeon at the hospital, said: "(The surgical robot) acts as an extension of the surgeon's hands and allows us to carry out complex surgeries through tiny incisions. It miniaturises the movements of the surgeon who control it.
"Our patient today has cancer of the colon and they've had several surgeries in the past. That means usually we would tackle this operation with a large open incision that extends from the ribs right down to the belly button.
"This robot enables us to do that same operation through tiny incisions instead, because of the control and accuracy of it. It means the patient will wake up from surgery with little or no pain and recover incredibly quickly.
"It's an incredible opportunity for all the surgeons here who are really looking forward to making a difference and pushing forward the boundaries of surgery for cancer."
During the operation, four arms of the robot were used simultaneously to make separate microscopic incisions on the 58-year-old woman, while two surgeons controlled them.
As well as reducing pain and blood loss for the patient, key hole surgery also minimises the time a patient spends in hospital recovering.
Although the Royal Mardsden hospital already carries out robotic surgery, the Da Vinci XI is able to work on multiple areas of the body at the same time and its arms can move independently from the body of the robot.
It was partly funded by a £1.5 million donation from philanthropist and former chairman of House Of Fraser Don McCarthy, whose wife Diana was treated at the hospital for bowel cancer before her death in 2007.
Alongside the arrival of the latest surgical robot, the hospital is launching a fellowship to train up to 30 future surgeons over the next 10 years who will be able to use the technology to operate on multiple tumour types.
The hospital said it hopes to carry out one or two operations every weekday with the robot, but says 80% of operations will still be completed in a traditional way because key hole surgery is not suitable.