Surgeon DaVinci meets anaesthetist McSleepy in first all-robo operation

WASHINGTON - In the world’s first all-robotic operation, surgical robot DaVinci and anaesthesia robot, nicknamed McSleepy performed a surgery on a prostatectomy patient at the Montreal General Hospital.

“Collaboration between DaVinci, a surgical robot, and anaesthetic robot McSleepy, seemed an obvious fit; robots in medicine can provide health care of higher safety and precision, thus ultimately improving outcomes,” said Dr. TM Hemmerling of McGill University and MUHC’s Department of Anaesthesia.

“The DaVinci allows us to work from a workstation operating surgical instruments with delicate movements of our fingers with a precision that cannot be provided by humans alone,” said Dr. A. Aprikian.

He and his team of surgeons operate the robotic arms from a dedicated workstation via video control with unsurpassed 3D HD image quality.

“Automated anaesthesia delivery via McSleepy guarantees the same high quality of care every time it is used, independent from the subjective level of expertise. It can be configured exactly to the specific needs of different surgeries, such as robotic surgery,” said Hemmerling.

“Obviously, there is still some work needed to perfect the all robotic approach - from technical aspects to space requirements for the robots,” he added.

Hemmerling also said that no matter how advanced robots become, they will not replace doctors but help them to perform to the highest standards.

The researchers will use the results of this project to test all robotic surgery and anaesthesia in a larger scale of patients and various types of surgery.

“This should allow for faster, safer and more precise surgery for our patients” concluded Aprikian. (ANI)