Video: Innovation in Robotic Surgery

Robots in the operating room provide surgeons with guidance for extreme precision in surgery.

Robotic surgery is just an expansion of laparoscopy so the robot allows to provide better visualization and better articulation but essentially it's laparoscopic surgery amplified. There are two cameras as you can see and those two cameras and allows for that parallax view to give you that three-dimensional imaging, so that's one of the things that separates this from a constrained laparoscopy.

There are two parts to the robot there's a part that's connected to the patient at the bedside and then there's a separate console that the surgeon works from all the instruments that are moving on. So on the inside of the patient are being controlled by by the surgeon so the monitor demonstrates a paper clip so it gives you a size and it shows that with suturing we can both so with the right hand or with the left hand and it essentially makes most surgeons ambidextrous the robot still has the ability to see and work through a smaller hole and do more so single side surgery is one advantage there's certain areas of the body that the surgeon works in that has the advantage of seeing better and working more fine detail with the robot.

So currently they used the robot for single site gallbladder surgery most patients enjoy that because they want up with 1/2 centimeter or 1 inch incision at the bellybutton and most of the patients come back and yet can't even tell they have a scar and although it's still early. They think we'll see that the outcomes will be better for robotic-assisted laparoscopic hernia repair compared to straight laparoscopic and so traditionally the laparoscopic approach primarily patched hernias.

The robotic approach allows them to actually close the defect in addition to packing it the risk of any surgery are pretty standard and and they emphasize that robotic surgery it's just laparoscopic surgery to another level and so the risks aren't any more than with laparoscopic surgery or with general surgery so it is surgery and a lot of the skills that we have acquired and trained to practice surgery they apply to this there are certain skill sets, that are in addition to that that require additional training there's a stepwise process that generally is in place to provide the surgeon with the baseline training hands-on training and then finally each individual facility has their own traditional process before the surgeon can practice this way.