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For the first time in the history of medicine, a robot has been used to conduct eye surgery. The experiment was performed at Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital and was made public in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Six out of 12 patients involved in this trial gave a nod to seek help of a robot for the surgery. The procedure involved eradicating a membrane from the back of the eye.
No one ever imagined that machines would have such huge potential in medicine, especially in delicate operations like this one.
According to a report by The Next Web, the surgery turned out to be a success though not a particularly rock’n’roll surgery. The devices were designed by PRECEYES, a Dutch medical robotics firm.
Four minutes and 55 seconds was the exact time taken for the robot-surgery, which was longer than the regular method, which takes only one minute and 20 seconds. It was observed that the surgeon using the robot was able to perform the procedure with equal or better efficacy than in the traditional manual approach.
Robert MacLaren said the trial “gives an idea that the robot has great potential for extending the boundaries of what [they] can achieve at this point of time.” The Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford also brought to the notice that their “next step will be to use the robotic surgical device for precise and minimally traumatic delivery of a gene therapy to the retina. This he says will be another first-in-man achievement and is all likely to commence in early 2019.”
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