MICROSURGERY
Talk about minimally invasive: closed chest, beating heart, and the surgeon's not even on the same continent. The man behind the high tech operation is Yulun Wang, the company is Computer Motion. And unless the FDA scrubs the OR schedule, late November will see the first completely remote surgery on a human.
Wang, a 40-year-old electrical engineer, founded Santa Barbara, California-based Computer Motion (www.computermotion.com) in 1989 as a robotics research lab, with funding from NASA. The firm soon shifted to medical robotics, producing in 1994 the first FDA-approved surgical robot, a voice-controlled endoscopic camera called Aesop.
Computer Motion's latest product - still in FDA trials - is Zeus, a robocam that does the seeing and the cutting. Doctors sit at a monitor showing endoscopic images and use computer-attached grips to guide the robotically controlled surgical instruments. With greater precision and dexterity than human surgeons, Zeus allows doctors to perform previously impossible procedures through incisions as small as 5 mm. For coronary bypass patients, this means avoiding having the chest cracked open and the heart stopped. For Computer Motion, it means a potentially huge slice of a market analysts estimate at $1.5 billion. The company recently sued for patent infringement its only major rival, Mountain View, California-based Intuitive Surgical, whose da Vinci robotic operating system is also in UStrials.
Until now, Zeus' patients and doctors were typically no farther apart than the next room. In November's test, a surgeon in the US will remove a gall bladder in France. Zeus images will be piped real-time to the doctor through end-to-end fiber.
Beyond that, telesurgery offers obvious advantages in more removed theaters of operation, from battlefields to Earth orbit. "This is the natural evolution of several technologies," says Wang. "It was never a matter of if, only a matter of when."
MUST READ
The eBallot and the Bullet
Distance Makes the Heart Grow Stronger
MP3 Meets MPAA
Ask Dr. Bob
Caught in the Act
Now That's Slugging Percentage!
People
Jargon Watch
NASA's Backup Backup
DNS Gets Tongue Lashing
Virtual Viral Marketing Virus
The Weather Overground
Raw Data
