New devices in medicine

Citation

Rudall, B.H. (1999), "New devices in medicine", Kybernetes, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1999.06728caa.006

New devices in medicine

Keywords Automation, Cybernetics, Research, Technological developments

Abstract Gives reports and surveys of selected current research and development in systems and cybernetics. They include: Human cells may process information, Artificial brain, Genetics smartcard, Robotic revolution, Application of AI, New devices in medicine, Innovations in cybernetics and systems.

New devices in medicine

Robotic heart surgeon

There have been a number of reports in this section of the progress being made in applying robotic techniques to medical processes. High on the list of achievements in this area have been the attempts to help in surgical operations. Already reports here have dealt with improved aids for surgeons with increased facilities for viewing and of producing images of the patient's progress. Indeed operations assisted by links with remote centres of expertise and with Internet information data banks are no longer unusual. All of these facilities and devices have been, in the main, aids to the operating medical staff but automated surgery still remains a remote goal, although there are many experimental systems in existence. From the Pennsylvania Hershey Medical Center, USA, however, comes a report of a truly robotic heart surgeon called "Zeus". On this occasion it appears that Zeus is not some robotics researcher's speculative design for an automated medical robot, but a working system that is starting its medical trials in a real-life hospital.

Heart surgery has always been a difficult process and includes many challenging surgical procedures which have had to be carried out by human hands which are not always able to perform accurately on all occasions. Zeus, therefore, will be welcomed and if its clinical trials are successful it will make a much needed contribution not only to cardiac surgery but also to the endeavours by medical researchers to getting official approval and, indeed, encouragement, to use and develop robotic devices in medical applications.

Clinical trials for Zeus

It is reported that the clinical trials of Zeus are proceeding and are considered to be most encouraging. The Head of cardiac surgery at the Hershey Medical Centre, Dr Ralph Damiano, has carried out the suturing in a four-hour heart bypass on a 70 year-old woman. A report from the hospital says that the patient was well and a recovery was expected. The same procedures are to be carried out by Dr Damiano on some ten more occasions as part of the trial programme. So far, however, the robotic surgeons have not been allowed to perform alone but they are used by the human surgeon to perform "tricky procedures" on their behalf. All the advantages of a robot device can be appreciated in such situations where the robot can keep a steady "hand" holding instruments steadier for longer and make consistently more precise movements than even the most competent human. It is reported that one of the robot's most important assets is that it can work through very small incisions in the patient's chest and consequently reduces the trauma suffered by many heart patients. We are told that often in such operations the patient's chest cavity has to be split and opened to give the human surgeon access to the damaged organ. It is hoped that systems such as Zeus will be developed in the future so that this need to open the chest of the patient will not be necessary and operations will be carried out through these very small incisions that are currently in use in "keyhole" surgery.

At present patients operated on using Zeus are carefully monitored by the human surgeons and the progress of the operation watched on a monitor fed pictures by the robot arm that holds the surgical instruments. The monitor's camera is moved by voice commands but handles controlled directly by the surgeon are used to manipulate the instruments and perform the procedure.

Such robotic devices will, of course, be slowly introduced into not only heart operations but all such medical procedures where the robot's characteristics are deemed to be required. Human participation and monitoring will still be regarded as essential even when the most sophisticated of robotic devices are in use. Both patients and surgeons will undoubtedly continue to demand this.