Currently in Chennai in India, major heart surgeries are being performed by a surgeon sitting on a console and manipulating a joy stick. In actuality, he is performing a surgery with the help of an extremely efficient electronic robot with arms.
The robot’s arms could be maneuvered to perform some very minute and subtle movements to wield the instruments for the operation. The patients, instead of the normally high recovery time are up and about in no time at all. The surgeon in question was Dr Ravi Kumar R from the Chettinad Health City CHC, and the patient was an auto driver on whom a double valve replacement operation was performed with robotics for the first ever time. Formerly, either the aortal or the mitral valve had been substituted with the help of robots, but simultaneous replacement of both the valves was a new occurrence. From the year 2000, robotics has been utilized in cardiac procedures and it usage has also spread over to other medical fields such as gynecology, urology and oncology. Despite being found in many hospitals in the US, in India it is available in just 4-6 hospitals such as CHC in Chennai, CARE in Pune, AIIMS in Delhi and Fortis-Escorts in Delhi.
Dr. Sudhir Srivastava who is the CMD of the new Fortis International Center for Robotic Surgery (ICRS) states that robotic surgical operations are to be performed in surgeries involving lung, heart, neck, head and in fields such as gynecology and urology. Dr. Srivastava further mentions that they have plans of launching 6-10 centers all over India in places such as Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Jaipur and Mohali. In the meantime, CARE has started a Center for Excellence in Minimal Access. According to Dr Ravi Kumar, as more and more awareness about robotic surgeries is spreading, in the future more than 30,000 robotic cardiac procedures could be performed in CHC annually.
With the cost of robots being very high, it is necessary to know if the patients would have to face the brunt of the heavy capital outlay needed for each center. However the advantages offered by robotic surgery such as lesser hospitalization times, reduced scarring, lesser pain and loss of blood, reduced recovery times, and much lower chances of infections post operations would definitely offset the much higher costs involved. One more major benefit would be that the operation would become much more precise for the surgeons with three-dimensional imaging, which has the capacity of magnifying 40 times and also much lower rates of fatigue and tremors for the surgeon. According to Dr Sailesh Puntnambaker robotic surgery was like driving on a ten lane expressway, without any traffic.
Source: http://www.chettinadhealthcity.com/