Taking Surgery to New Depths

This next generation of power also will play a vital role in telesurgery, which is the ability of a doctor to perform surgery without being in the same physical location as a patient. In fact, the potential for telesurgery already has been realized.

“On Sept. 7, 2001, Dr. Jacques Marescaux, operating from New York, successfully removed the gall bladder of a woman on the other side of the Atlantic, in Strasbourg, France, using a remote-controlled robot-assisted laparoscopic device. Since then, surgeons have performed more complex operations on remote patients using a variety of surgical tools,” Hanson wrote.⁴

Hanson goes on to write about NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operation (NEEMO), which is based on the ocean floor off Key Largo, Fla. The NEEMO project places astronauts in an undersea environment to simulate living and working conditions that they may face on the International Space Station, and could one day encounter on the moon and Mars. One of the goals of the NEEMO project is to use technology to enable doctors to perform surgery in environments that are too dangerous or remote to reach in person.

The base unit, called Aquarius, is an underwater laboratory and home to scientists for missions up to 10 days. At present, Aquarius is located in a sand patch on the ocean floor at a depth of 63 feet.
On a mission a few years ago, Mehran Anvari, M.D., founding director of the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) at McMaster University, used a surgical robot located at the university’s home of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, to suture a laceration on one of Aquarius’ underwater aquanauts. The device he controlled was a small portable robot, equipped with a camera and pincers that easily would fit aboard a space shuttle.

From a console at the university, Anvari repeatedly has been successful in using surgical robots to operate on patients hundreds of miles away—and, in the case of NEEMO, almost 100 feet below the earth’s surface.⁵ Furthermore, he’s teaching and mentoring dozens of other surgeons to be able to do the same.

By combining power, robotics, and pioneering communication technology, telesurgery not only would extend health services to remote rural areas in the United States, but even to other countries where quality medical care is hard to come by.

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There’s no doubt that advances in power and technology will help shape and expand the future of medicine. Medtech companies that want to be on the cutting edge of meeting global healthcare needs in 2013 and beyond will be well served to prepare now—even before 2012 comes to a close. As American statesman Dean Acheson wisely stated, “Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.”

By evaluating how power and robotics can enhance their existing or emerging technologies, medical device companies position themselves to benefit more people in the future and do so safely, reliably, and economically.