A research group led by Professor Toshihiko Shibata and Associate Professor Yosuke Takahashi of the Graduate School of Medicine at Osaka Municipal University has developed a support device to ensure that areas of the body are visible when performing heart surgery using a surgical support robot.
According to Osaka Municipal University, recently, there has been an increase in the use of surgical robots in cardiac surgery to reduce the physical burden on the patient, but it is necessary to insert the robot's arm through a small incision to ensure a visible surgical field. This role is performed by an assistant standing next to the patient, but there was a problem in that the smoothness of the surgery depends on the skill of the assistant.
The new support device was developed to solve this problem by inserting a rolled-up plastic plate into the heart, which expands naturally due to its elasticity, ensuring a visible surgical area. The material is medically approved plastic.
Since cardiac surgery requires the heart to be stopped before it can be performed, the procedure must be completed in a short time. When this device was used in surgery at Osaka Municipal University, the time the heart stopped was shortened. Osaka Municipal University hopes to apply this device to fields other than cardiac surgery, such as oral surgery and otorhinolaryngology, in the future.
Paper information:[Innovations] Self-adjusting Atrial and Subvulvular Exposure System for Robotic Surgery
