In the US, approximately one in eight men will get prostate cancer. It can be frequently be treated, sometimes by surgical removal of the prostate. Of course, that can lead to other problems including erectile dysfunction. That's because during the surgery, the nearby nerves and blood vessels that control erections may be damaged. The good news is that robots may be able to help.
Last month, UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Cadeddu used two robot surgery systems from different manufacturers to remove the prostate from a 67-year-old man suffering from Stage 2 prostate cancer. Thanks to the robots' ability to move with unprecedented precision, the technique may enable the surgeons to avoid damaging nerves.
"We have a magnetic technology that enables better retraction of the tissues and better visualization," Dr. Alberto Rodriguez-Navarro, founder/CEO of Levita Magnetics, told the New York Post. "In the case of the prostate, this might result in the surgeon better seeing the nerve bundles. The nerves are very important because they are related to incontinence, like urinary incontinence, and also sexual function, so preserving those nerves is critical."
Cadeddu married the capabilities of the Levita Magnetics system with Intuitive Surgica's da Vinci robot surgeon that requires just a single "keyhole" incision for insertion of multiple instruments in a bundle.
"The actual cutting out of the prostate is done by the [da Vinci] robot, but the manipulation of adjacent tissues is done by the MARS magnetic robot," Cadeddu explained. "Marrying the two in one operation — two robots, one controlling the grasper, one controlling the scissors and the dissection by the surgeon — that's the novelty."
Eventually, the dual robot approach could be used for other procedures beyond prostate removal.
Previously:
• Factory robot convinces 12 other robots to go on strike
• Here's why we don't have robot butlers yet
• Cyborg-Insect Factory is a real machine that turns cockroaches into robots
• Squishy robots learn to bend, stretch and squirm on command