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Five Robot-assisted Surgeries That Prove Robots Might Take over the Medical Industry

Surgeons use the robot da Vinci to aid a hernia operation, at the University Hospital Geneva, in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008. The surgeons are with the surgical team of Swiss professor Phillipe Morel, head of visceral and transplantation surgery and chairman of the department of surgery of the University Hospital Geneva. The University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) opened the department for robotic surgery on Thursday, where between 50 and 80 surgeons from around the world will have the possibility to train with the robot da Vinci each year. (AP Photo/Keystone, Salvatore Di Nolfi)

Surgeons use the robot da Vinci to aid a hernia operation, at the University Hospital Geneva, in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008. The surgeons are with the surgical team of Swiss professor Phillipe Morel, head of visceral and transplantation surgery and chairman of the department of surgery of the University Hospital Geneva. The University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) opened the department for robotic surgery on Thursday, where between 50 and 80 surgeons from around the world will have the possibility to train with the robot da Vinci each year. (AP Photo/Keystone, Salvatore Di Nolfi)

Dr Prem Nath Dogra, head and professor in the Department of Urology at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), performed India’s first robot-assisted surgery in 2010.

  • Last Updated: February 01, 2021, 15:17 IST

With exponential advancement in the field of technology and robotics, in particular, it should come as no surprise that robots are now helping the medical community in performing some complicated surgeries. And quite deftly so.

One of the biggest advantages of robot-assisted surgeries is that they eliminate any chance of human error that might occur in traditional surgery. The method has become so common that in the US, one surgeon has performed more than 2,000 robot-assisted surgeries. Dr Fernando Bayron, MD, FACS, achieved this feat last year in 2020 when he performed his 2,000th robotic surgery case as a general surgeon, according to a report.

Let us take a look at some of the robot-assisted surgeries that have taken place over the years:

1. Dr Prem Nath Dogra, head and professor in the Department of Urology at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), performed India’s first robot-assisted surgery in 2010. The surgery was a ‘robotic anterior exenteration’, which means the removal of organs towards the front of the pelvic cavity, on a 50-year-old woman who was suffering from cancer of the urethra and bladder.

2. In 2018, Gujarat’s Dr Patel became the first surgeon in the world to conduct a robot-assisted heart surgery on a patient situated 30 kilometers away from his location. Dr. Patel controlled the robots through his console and performed the telestenting surgery on a patient who was at the operation theatre at Apex Heart Institute in Ahmedabad. The middle- aged woman had suffered a heart attack a few days before her surgery. Dr Patel has also been awarded Padma Shri and has opened the first facility outside the US that performs robotic procedures for heart-related surgeries.

3. Another robot-assisted surgery took place in London where Consultant thoracic surgeon Alan Kirk removed a patient's thymus gland from between the lungs in 2019. The surgery was conducted with the help of the £2m Da Vinci robot.

4. This month, doctors from Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi conducted a robot-assisted surgery on a 31-year-old woman from Kota, Rajasthan, to treat a rare form of a hereditary disease - multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2A (MEN2A). The doctors found that the patient had developed two tumours - one in the thyroid and another in the adrenal gland. To reduce the amount of bleeding and ensure precision in a rare case like this, the team of doctors decided to perform a telerobotic surgery.

5. In 2019, Canada’s Neuroradiologist Dr. Vitor Pereira and team completed the world's first brain aneurysm surgery using robotics. Dr Pereira performed the crucial surgery on a 64-year-old patient who had a large brain aneurysm that was on the verge of rupturing, which could have been life-threatening. With the help of a robotic system, the surgeon placed a stent to rebuild the artery, and implanted the coils to cut the aneurysm’s blood supply.


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