Video: Da Vinci Surgical Robot Deftly Peels a Grape

Wow this is amazing. Medical science deserves the respect it gets. I am glad to see the fruit of our engineers translate into something useful and not for destruction.

Just think of the possibilities. This machine could be setup in a third world country and the surgeon (operator) could be in Europe or north America.

The future is collaborative

What happens if there is a power outage, or the system breaksdown in the middle of surgury?

What then?
If you survive who do you sue? The machine, the hospital or the doctor?

What happens if there is a power outage, connection failure or the system breaksdown in the middle of surgury?

What then?
If you survive who do you sue? The machine, the hospital or the doctor?

Sorry for the double post

@readysetboom If this is all you have to worry about when power goes out in a hospital, that is pretttyyy stupid, sorry to say.
That is why hospitals have backup generators and backup backup generators and so on and so forth.

This is magnificent, being that I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan, going to see a specialist generally involves a flight, because being that Marquette General is our best hospital, they don't have everything. There are so many people who have to get flow down to other places, but with this we could bring the doctor to us as fast as the connection allows. I can't wait to see where this goes.

Can you imagine all of those arms arrayed around your groin with surgical implements in their tiny grippers? Scary.

I wonder if there are any kind of limitations placed on their range of motion to prevent them from going where they shouldn't. What if someone bumps into the operator while he is conducting your surgery?

Where my father works, doctors there have used similar machines to perform surgeries on patients who were hundreds of miles away.

Pretty neat stuff.

Democedes,

The physicians using these robots are very well trained. Laparotomy (minimally invasive) surgery is the surgery of the future. The role of "smart" technology in medicine is becoming more important. As much as it pains me to admit it, surgical robots will make surgeons much more efficient and precise. Robots don't have tremors or emotions, while humans do. Also, the procedure that this robot was primarily designed for was prostate surgery. The DaVinci is far more precise concerning prostate surgery than a physician. This robot can help prevent impotence (and other side effects) in prostate surgery. Believe me, in the hands of a competent surgeon, the DaVinci robot will be your friend and possibly save your life.

Wow,you mean they have sophisticated medical technology in counries that have universal healthcare? Ummm, I mean socialized medicine.

@readysetboom You don't have to sue anybody, you could could just take it as an error, no one turned the power off on purpose. Why are we Americans so eager to sue?
On the other hand that is a very good point.

To common problems with microscopic surgery is there is limits to the jitters of the human body. Even our own pulse gets in the way of extreme fine surgery. Then there is the problem of a image being sometimes view backwards to the surgeon when he looks through many optics. Robotic surgery helps solve a lot of these problems.

So my thoughts on this...is someone collecting all the data from all the successful surgeries the Davinchi does? I have to imagine at some point the will be able to make an algorythm from collected data to let the robot do surgery all on its own, without the element of human error, even if it is preventing much human error by slowing everything down.

This will be the future, accurate, and effecient robots performing all the surgery we need and better than the human counterparts....which brings me back to the whole we need a new way to distribute working hours as robots take over our workforce and lighten the load greatly.

Just a personal story related to the topic:
I had surgery via Da Vinci and I have to say it was pretty amazing. They removed a tumor from around a nerve that was running behind and butting against my left kidney. The surgery took 3 hours and the tumor was completely removed. I've had no numbness or related nerve pain since it was done 2 years ago, which is a testament to both the surgeon and the Da Vinci Robotic surgery system's effectivness and ability.

Perhaps we should put them in ambulances. Bring the surgeon to the accident.