Snipping and suturing tirelessly, and with extreme precision, da Vinci takes surgery to a level that transcends both skill and art, proving that, for some procedures, three mechanical arms are better than two human ones.
As a surgeon manipulates handles at a console several feet from the patient, the robot's computer translates every hand and wrist movement to tiny instruments on the tips of long tubes inserted into the body through unobtrusive slits. Through a binocular-like eyepiece, the surgeon sees a three-dimensional operating field that appears larger than life.
What robots lack in bedside manner, they make up in dexterity. More than just flashy, high-tech gadgetry, da Vinci aims to make surgery substantially less invasive than ever before, and often, faster and more exacting. (It doesn't hesitate or tremble, for example, major advantages when operating on a beating heart.) In skilled hands, robots minimize trauma to the body and hasten patients' recovery.
In addition to its 3-D imaging, the da Vinci's range of motion allows finite movements that echo those of the surgeon's own forearm and hand. The technology is advanced even further because the surgeon's eyes are in line with his or her hands-translating the surgeon's actual hand movements into movements of the robot's "wrists" with six degrees of freedom. All of these facets solve the limitation of two-dimensional imaging and the inability to work at angles associated with conventional minimally invasive surgery.
"The da Vinci surgical system has the potential to revolutionize minimally invasive surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital," said Lawrence Cohn, MD, who originally recognized the potential benefits of this innovative system in cardiac surgery and was responsible for bringing it to the hospital. The robot has helped perform coronary bypass surgery and mitral valve repair-making incisions that span two inches instead of twelve.
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