Robots performed the first all robotic surgery at Canada's McGill University Health Centre last Wednesday.
The procedure carried out under the mechanically assisted knife was a prostatectomy. This was the first surgery where no part of the surgical procedure was performed directly by humans.
The Da Vinci surgical robot has been around for some time and has performed assisted surgeries before, the McSleepy anaesthesia robot has been invented by the Montreal General Hospital doctors. The surgery used both these robots together.
da Vinci System. Image Credit: Intuitive Surgical
Da Vinci can make surgical cuts and stitches with much greater accuracy than the human hand. The surgeon is at a console manipulating the controls while the mechanical arm operates on the patient. McSleepy can deliver a much more stable anaesthesia that a human could as per anaesthesiologist Thomas Hemmerling.
The surgery was performed on Gilles Lefort a 68 year old man who was not surprised when the urologic surgeon Armen Apikian asked him about undergoing the surgery with robots.
The surgery was overseen by a human surgeon and anaesthesiologist and was declared a success.