Telerobotic Surgery
– William H. Welch
A patient is admitted in a remote hospital. His symptoms include tightness in the chest, difficulty in breathing, chest pains and pain shooting down one side of his upper body. Further diagnosis shows that the man has a blocked coronary artery on his heart. The doctor comes to the conclusion that the only procedure that will save this person’s life is a coronary bypass.
The patient is rushed into the operating room and is prepared for surgery. After sedation the first incisions are made into the patient’s chest. Through these incisions the surgeon begins the meticulous process of repairing the artery by grafting a new vessel over the damaged section of the patient’s heart.
After the completion of this procedure the surgeon asks that the patient be closed up and taken to the Intensive Care Unit. The patient will recover from the surgery, returning home within a couple of days after the procedure.
Within a few days of the procedure? Even more incredible than this is that the surgeon who carried out the procedure wasn’t in the operating room at the time, or even in the same hospital. The patient was operated on by a surgeon thousands of miles away.
Sound like science fiction? Far from it. The technology now exists that allows a doctor to operate on a patient without being in the same room. Dubbed “telerobotics”, this new field of medical technology uses devices that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.