I was giving a talk today at New Jersey City University and was asked a good question.
Do I think that robotic surgery will change so the robot does the surgery?
Currently the da Vinci Surgical system is a master-slave system, where the surgeon is the master and the console is the slave. The da Vinci system translates a surgeons movements, but does not act independently in any way, meaning that it is not a true “robot“. I have described the robotic system previously.
I was asked if I thought the day would come when there would be a true robotic system that can be programmed to perform surgery more accurately?
In order for a robot to perform surgery, it would require complex programming.
Anatomy varies from person to person and as of now, imaging does not exist that could lead to an accurate enough picture to allow a robot to be programmed to remove an organ.
Lets take a prostate for example, since it is the most common robotic operation performed: the da Vinci prostatectomy.
Prostates vary in shape and need to be separated from muscle, nerves, and blood vessels. Prostates also often have bumps in them.
We would need to program the robot to accurately separate the prostate from all of these structures without causing bleeding. In my opinion, this is too difficult of a task to program.
What I could see easier would be a sensor, or transducer, on an instrument that would prevent you or warn you from entering certain tissue that you would not want to enter.
I think before the time that the technology would exist to allow this type of robotic surgery, there will be other therapies that are not clinically available that will replace all surgery. I think one day we will have vaccines to prevent prostate cancer or gene therapy to treat it.
I wonder what other people think about this and welcome comments.