Robots lead the way in minimally invasive surgery

Susan Caesar is about to perform a minimally invasive procedure using a robot.  It’s her first time and she’s not even a doctor.  She actually works at Hewlett Packard.

“Two small movements and I learned how it reacted to my movements. I was picking up the little circles and putting them on the cones so it was pretty great.” she said afterward.”

Ok, the robot is real but the patient is not. This is just a demonstration of the Davinci Xi robot by Intuitive Surgical.  Doctors affiliated with Tomball Regional Medical center are showing it off and letting employees at HP put it through it’s paces. The robot can take the operators large motions and make them smaller with incredible precision. Its the newest thing in minimally invasive surgery. The doctors love it and say the patients do too..

“Right now with this I get better visualization and the patient experiences less pain and quicker recovery with it.” claimed one surgeon.

Not to mention fewer complications afterward like post operative infections that could lead to costly readmissions.

But at two million dollars, many hospitals might balk at buying one.

“But just like laparoscopy is still more expensive for a gallbladder than an open surgery yet we do it anyway because the patient outcome is better.” said Dr. Brian Harkins. He says surgical robots like this are the future of medicine, and the future is here.