Advanced Robotic Technology Is the Future of Surgery

Abstract

EDITORIALCurrently, we live in a new era of minimally invasive surgery. Operations are more like video games than traditional open surgeries. The old-fashioned expression that "a good surgery requires a large incision" has been completely abandoned in countries where medical technology and research are well structured. Within the modern minimally invasive surgeries over the last 30 years, laparoscopic surgery is the most well established and recognized approach. However, with development of advanced technologies and intense research, robotic surgery has emerged in the last decade as an attractive alternative to laparoscopic surgery.Nowadays, robotic technology plays an important role in our daily life beginning with its use in industries until its adaptation for the medical field. The history of robots begins in science fiction books and movies, where sometimes the robots were seen as an independent and even with some complicities with humans, as in the movie of George Lucas, "Star Wars" where robots were friends with humans, but in other cases with conflict, as in movie "Terminator" that robots were enemies against the human race. Furthermore, in today's industry there are many applications of robots. On the other hand, in medicine, this technology has been introduced successfully even though it is still difficult to think that a robot can perform surgery independently without human monitoring.Robotic technology in surgery initially was introduced in areas where a high level of precision and fine movements are required such as in Neurosurgery or when repeated actions are needed as in Urology. Currently, robotic surgery is performed in different surgical specialties including gynecological 1 , pancreatic 2 , bariatric 3 , colon surgery 4 , etc. Essentially, robots can replicate the movements of a surgeon with high precision, reducing any type of errors. Robotic surgery has many advantages over the wellestablished laparoscopic surgery. One of the major disadvantages of laparoscopic surgery includes the mismatch between the vision space and instruments, vision is usually 2D in laparoscopic surgery causing the surgeon to lose the prospect of depth, as well as the limitation of rotational movements and imperfect coordination of the eye and hand since the camera is controlled by an assistant.However, in robotic surgery, these limitations have been exceeded. First, there is a 3D high resolution visualization. Second, hand movements are coordinated perfectly by the camera; essentially, visual fields follow simultaneously to the hand movements without need of an assistant to manipulate the camera as in laparoscopic surgery. Third, robots reduce the tremor of the human hand, improving precision and operational dexterity and with new endo-wrist technology, surgeons using the robot can suture with more rotational degrees. Finally, haptic feedback which is touch feedback (kinesthetic (force) and cutaneous (tactile) feedback) has improved significantly with new technology systems with multimodal haptic feedback programs 5 .