Robot surgeons scrub up

Robot-assisted surgery gives doctors greater precision than using their own hands, and it is easier to reach some parts inside the body using flexible mechanical joints.

The miniature medics are equipped with lights and a camera to relay video images back to their operator, and an array of different tools that could help surgeons stop internal bleeding by clamping or cauterizing wounds.

In 2000, surgeons at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis conducted the first pilot trial of robot-assisted heart surgery1, and a wide range of procedures now use mechanized instruments. A year later, doctors in New York used a remote-controlled robot to remove a gall bladder from a woman in Strasbourg, France.

Robotic instruments that can be manipulated through a 'keyhole' cut in the patient avoid the trauma caused by larger incisions. But Oleynikov points out that small incisions can constrain the reach of the implements and obscure the surgeon's view of the operating site. Self-contained robots that go right inside are much more versatile, he argues.

•	Robot surgeons scrub up Future operations could be performed from the inside Nature Magazine (UK), Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005 Byline: Mark Peplow