NASA: Portable Robot Surgeon

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Don't laugh; many types of surgery in the US are now performed using robots including gall bladder, prostate and many abdominal and heart procedures. The list is growing fast.<br /><br />Some day one of these could well perform emergency surgery at an accident scene or outpatient procedures in a family doctors office under the remote guidance of a human surgeon initially, but autonomous surgical robots <b><i>are</i></b> under development. <br /><br />The first autonomous surgery was a heart procedure performed in Italy in 2006. Future shock <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />Article....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b> NASA Testing Portable Robot Surgeon</b><br /><br /><b><i>In zero gravity, both the medical robot and the patient will have to be immobilized, and doctors will have to deal with the different ways organs and bodily fluids move without gravity, explained Dr. Mika Sinanan. A major goal of the experiment is to show that the robot can be dismantled, transported and set up by non-engineers in zero gravity.</i></b><br /><br />Doctors and scientists from the University of Washington will get a glimpse of what it would be like to do remote surgery in space when a portable medical robot they created will be tested next month in an underwater environment designed by NASA to simulate zero gravity.<br /><br />The portable robot, which can be controlled over the Internet by a human surgeon many miles away, is being developed with money from the U.S. Defense Department to be used to treat wounded soldiers on a battlefield, to perform complicated surgery on patients in remote areas of the developing world and to help sick astronauts in space.<br /><br />The difference between the robot surgeon demonstrated at the University of Washington on Wednesday and others that are being used today in American hospitals involves portability and communi</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>