Robot lovers rejoice, as ISMETT transplant center in Palermo, Sicily has reported the first successful partial liver transplant involving only a robot!
“This is the first case in the world performed entirely and exclusively with the robotic technique,” said ISMETT.
It took ten hours, but the bot made the moves into the abdomen and carefully extracted part of a healthy brother’s liver to be used to aid the other brother suffering from cirrhosis.
Are we talking about the robot apocalypse here?
On the contrary, if human surgeons can embrace and partner up with the robot surgeons, we could be headed towards a brighter future (for our organs, at least).
The precision and ability to make minimal cuts and enter a smaller area on the patient greatly reduces trauma, and could bolster medical strategies throughout the world.
“The use of new technologies in transplant surgery is extremely important since reducing trauma for patients may encourage living organ donations and increase the number of transplants,” the ISMETT center said.
This multi-tentacled bot, conceived at the Robotic Surgery Center, made only five keyhole incisions and one nine-centimeter incision for the partial liver removal operation, states the ISMETT center.
The hepatectomy was performed in March but the news was held until the recipient was given a clean bill of health and discharged from the hospital.
“In the past, some living donor liver transplants had been performed in the US using the robot,” the ISMETT center said, but a surgeon had always aided those; he was the one to actually insert his hand through the incision to perform the surgery with the bot.
Da Vinci SHDI bot has stolen the headlines, and the brothers – age 44 and 46 – are recovered healthily. The donor left the hospital only nine days after the infamous robot’s procedure because of the reduced trauma!
[via NZ Herald]
