Robotic surgery is nothing new, but normally the robot is only used in a support role for the surgeon. Now in a first of its kind procedure, a pair of robots were used to partially remove a man's prostate, with direct contact from the human surgeons.
The actual cutting and stitching was done by a robot called DaVinci, operated by Dr. Armen Aprikian at McGill University Health Center in Montreal, while another robot nicknamed McSleepy acted as the anesthetist.
Both Dr, Aprikian and anesthetist Dr. Thomas Hemmerling concluded that the robots helped them to complete the procedure more reliably and accurately than if the doctors had been operating directly on the patient. They do point out however, that the days of completely autonomous robotic surgery are still a long ways off.
The video explains the DaVinci robot in more detail, but be warned if you're eating dinner, the video does get pretty graphic at times.
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