surgery

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Some tumors are extremely small and hide deep within lung tissue, making it difficult for surgeons to reach them. To address this challenge, UNC –Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University researchers have been working on an extremely bendy but sturdy robot capable of traversing lung tissue.

A team led by scientists Dr. Maximilian Kückelhaus and Prof. Tobias Hirsch from the Centre for Musculoskeletal Medicine at the University of Münster has carried out the first completely robot-supported microsurgical operations on humans. The physicians used an innovative operating method in which a new type of operations robot, designed especially for microsurgery, is networked with a robotic microscope.

Brazilian twins who were joined at the head have been separated by surgeons using virtual reality. Three-year-olds Bernardo and Arthur Lima underwent surgeries in Rio de Janeiro, with a connection to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The doctors have trained for months, using virtual reality projections of the twins based on CT and MRI scans.

A miniaturized robot invented by Nebraska Engineering Professor Shane Farritor may soon work in space. NASA has awarded the University of Nebraska-Lincoln $100,000 through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) at the University of Nebraska Omaha to ready the surgical robot for a 2024 test mission aboard the International Space Station. 

Virtual Incision Corporation, a medical device company working on a miniaturized robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) platform, announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) supplement to complete the final stage of its clinical study analyzing the MIRA Platform in bowel resection procedures. The approval was supported by a favorable interim clinical study report on the safety profile of MIRA.

Cardiac surgeons may be able to better plan operations and improve their surgical field view with the help of a robot. Controlled through a virtual reality parallel system as a digital twin, the robot can accurately image a patient through ultrasound without the hand cramping or radiation exposure that hinder human operators. The international research team published their method in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica.