Tag: SURGERY

Researchers in Germany have developed a new endoscopic camera that's cheap enough to be thrown away after each use, and small enough to see eye-to-eye with a grain of rice. Designed at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration, the prototype's camera is just one cubic millimeter in size, and features a resolution of 62,500 pixels. But researchers say it's still ...

Having a snake burrow its way through your chest doesn't sound like a terribly enjoyable experience, but that's exactly what the Cardio Arm is designed to do to patients undergoing heart surgery. Created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Cardio Arm is a snake-like robot capable of entering a patient's chest through a three-quarter inch incision in the solar plexus. The snake and ...

While surgical robots are much more precise than clunky human hands, the surgeons who use these devices aren't able to guide the 'bots with their natural sense of touch, and this can make it easier to bump into a delicate organ or artery. In response to this problem, some graduate engineering students at the University of Washington recently developed an Xbox 360 Kinect hack, which uses the ...

Today, a cardiologist in England will attempt to become the world's first doctor to execute a heart operation via a remotely controlled robotic arm and advanced 3-D mapping technology. The doctor, André Ng, is scheduled to perform an operation to correct an irregular heart rhythm, called atrial fibrillation (AF), in a 63-year-old man. To pull off the feat, he'll be using the Amigo ...

Doctors at McGill University Health Center in Montreal have performed the first ever robot-assisted surgery on a patient, without any direct doctor-to-patient contact. Of course, robotic surgery isn't a new approach in medicine, and, no, these 'bots aren't autonomous. Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and Dr. Armin Aprikian controlled robots named McSleepy and DaVinci, as they administered anesthesia and ...

We've heard of 'BlackBerry thumb' -- the inflammation and pain reported by heavy, heavy users of the smartphone -- and we've heard about its alleged treatments ($80 massage). But one Philadelphia mortgage banker, after spending 12 hours a day texting clients, has just undergone surgery for extreme 'BlackBerry thumb' (although 'BlackBerry thumb' may be a misnomer in this case, since the banker is ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a miniature eye implant that promises to drastically improve vision in the elderly by replicating and enhancing the eye's natural lens. According to CBC News, VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies got the go-ahead from the FDA to continue implanting a miniature telescope into the eyes of elderly people who are suffering from end-stage ...

Open heart surgery is dangerous, can be highly invasive and leaves a nasty scar. Doctors often opt for so-called "keyhole" surgery, whereby doctors enter the body through a small tube, and operate remotely with the aid of a video camera. The problem with most of these tools is that they're either inflexible and needle-like, thus requiring a straight line to the operating area, or are soft and ...

Surgery, by definition, has always been a hands-on endeavor. It gets messy, it gets fleshy, and it definitely gets a doc's hands dirty. But all that may soon change, thanks to a new, robotic procedure that doesn't even require a surgeon be in the same room as the patient. Dr. Andre Ng, a consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Glenfield Hospital in the U.K., recently became the ...

Some things in life were made to be done quickly -- the 100-meter dash, 'Dance Dance Revolution,' and the blog post, to name a few. Please notice that a vasectomy reversal is not on that list. Doctors at the University of Florida, though, have broken the record for the world's fastest robotic vasectomy reversal, an achievement that some experts are heralding as a breakthrough and others are ...

In a strange meeting of James Cameron and feel-good medical magic, a young boy who was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer a year ago is now cancer free, thanks to an experimental prosthetic replacement. Mark Blinder was three years old when doctors determined he had Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, in his arm's humerus bone. The Los Angeles Times reports that doctors ...

Dr. David Samadi may look like he's playing a video game when he's at work, but he's actually performing robotic prostate surgery. The Chief of the Division of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at New York's Mt. Sinai Medical Center is one of only a half-dozen or so United States surgeons who can perform robotic laparoscopic surgery, which uses a special 3-D control system to operate the ...

There are lots of mean-spirited people out there. Some even feel it necessary to take uncalled-for taunts online and broadcast them on sites like MySpace and Facebook for some sort of attention. And, unfortunately, some individuals are particularly sensitive to heartless ribbing and react in drastic ways. Take, for instance, Caerphilly, South Wales resident Lowri Ryland, a 21-year-old law school ...

Oh boy, from the looks of that picture, the only perquisites for using the updated da Vinci Si surgical system are video game skills, a preference for interacting with the physical world on a high-def display, and an abnormal interest in robots. Sound like anyone you know? Intuitive Surgical's latest robotic system features two separate HD optical channels that the manufacturer claims will give ...

British surgeons, according to the Telegraph, recently operated on a young man's brain with the aid of an unusual surgical tool: an iPod. Due to the risk of severe brain damage inherent in removing 18-year-old Gavin Brooke's brain tumor, doctors found it necessary to keep the teenager awake -- though anesthetized -- throughout the procedure in order to speak with him and insure that no damage ...