The robot-surgeon for the first time operated on the human eye

In 2016, Oxford University began the preparation of clinical trials of the new robotic PRECEYES system. It is intended for operations in front of a person, and last Monday there was the first detailed report on the testing of the novelty. In nine operations, the robot did not make any mistakes.

PRECEYES is a robotic "hand" of a wide profile that obeys the commands of a doctor, but performs all actions with high accuracy. Here, the risk of accidental movement is excluded, even with direct external action, the scalpel will never falter in the hand of the electronic surgeon. And besides him, the robot can apply almost the entire range of operating tools.

At the first stage of the test, 12 identical operations were performed on live patients: removal of a fragment of the retina membrane of the eye. Half of the operations were performed with the PRECEYES robot, three times slower than manually, but without additional incisions. For example, a doctor needs a special flashlight to operate the microscope, whereas the robot performed all the manipulations through a single tiny cut in the retina.

At the second stage, the robot successfully removed hemorrhages in three patients. The project manager, Robert McLaren, notes - surgeons are new to technology, they are reinsured, hence the low speed of work. But now it is obvious that PRECEYES is ready for the next, extremely prohibitive test: gene therapy of the retina. Doctors-people are only able to distinguish the "inactive" part of the retina from the live, but the use of the robot will allow to enter the working substance very accurately, directly into the blood vessel or neuron, to unlock them. While this is impossible in principle, but robots like PRECEYES are created to make such treatment real.

techcult.ru