Da Vinci robot surgeon removes inoperable tumor, saving patient’s life

https://bgr.com/science/da-vinci-robot-surgeon-removes-inoperable-tumor-saving-patients-life/

by geox • 3 years ago

75 84 3 years ago

bgr.com

konschubert• 3 years ago

This is an ad with very little information.

jaclaz• 3 years ago

It seems more a summary of this (linked to):

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/first-p...

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

So sounds like slow news-day.

A columnist got surgery done for case with some complications. Next some other publication wrote article to generate articles. Essentially showing where we are. Mildly interesting things get circulated.

RockRobotRock• 3 years ago

Why would da Vinci need to advertise?

chrisjj• 3 years ago

Let's not forget "Swan and Morton scapel No. 3 removes inoperable tumor, saving patient’s life" ... 100,000 times.

idiot900• 3 years ago

Robotic head and neck surgery is routine at major medical centers all over. Da Vinci has been around for many years and it is human controlled.

I’m glad this patient was helped but there is absolutely nothing interesting otherwise about this.

richk4494• 3 years ago

What an amazing world we live in. There is nothing interesting about a robotic assisted surgery able to perform more delicate and sophisticated operations than the best human surgeon in the world.

coldtea7• 3 years ago

What an amazing world we live in.

The kind of amazing where untold millions of people can't afford basic healthcare in the same country that we have a robot surgeon?

iancmceachern12• 3 years ago

This kind of headline drives me nuts.

Da Vinci is telecontrolled. The robot does nothing but imitate the exact motion its commanded to by the surgeon.

The headline should read " Surgeon saves patients life using surgical tool that has been widely available an on the market for decades"

The medical professionals deserve the credit. If this was 20 years ago, yeah, we should celebrate the technical achievement and advancement, but there isn't one here. It's old news.

Source- I've designed several (surgical robots)

ww520• 3 years ago

Yes, the medical advancement is quite amazing. Couple years ago a friend went on a funding tour visiting startups and he mentioned he saw a demo of 3D oral scanning device to build a 3D model of the teeth. This year I saw the device in my dentist office and did an oral scan to build the 3D mold for bite guard. He said it's cheaper than the old method.

PrimeMcFly• 3 years ago

Correct. In the same way there is nothing interesting about being able to buy a 60" flat screen TV for $300 brand new.

Times change, technology advances, and when those advances become 'old' they cease to be interesting for the most part.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

Cars are just as impressive, just a century older.

wait_a_minute• 3 years ago

It's interesting to me. This is the first I read about Da Vinci and its capabilities in surgery.

mrabcx• 3 years ago

How could it be inoperable if a human controlled robot managed to remove it?

glimshe• 3 years ago

Inoperable without the robot, which can reach deeper where hand controlled instruments wouldn't be able to.

prasadjoglekar• 3 years ago

TL;DR: old human hand based surgery breaks the jaw to get to the area of the throat where the cancer was. Causes lots of complications after; or is simply deemed too hard.

The robot is more dextrous and thinner and can do the surgery without breaking the jawbones.

srean• 3 years ago

In a similar way that a scalpel helps execute a surgery that's inoperable without a scalpel. There's a lot of difference between a scalpel and a 'robot' but its a tool nonetheless.

In other words, I agree with what you are saying.

dv_dt3• 3 years ago

As I understand the daVinci device is not really a robot in the sense that it works autonomously. It’s a precision waldo setup with a surgeon in control.

henriquez• 3 years ago

With enough training data it should be possible to make fully automated AI surgeon bots that outperform human operators. Who wants to sign up for the private beta?

dv_dt3• 3 years ago

They don't even have fully automated butchers yet

MattGaiser2• 3 years ago

I have been hearing about Da Vinci for years and Wikipedia says it was being for 200,000 surgeries back in 2012. [0] The manufacturer claims there are about 7000 of the units.

Is this remarkable? I would imagine that it saves thousands of lives a year.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Surgical_System

coldtea7• 3 years ago

Yes, but it's the most precious lives. The lives of those who can afford it.

MattGaiser2• 3 years ago

This surgery happened in Canada, where there is universal health care.

rurban2• 3 years ago

Not on civilised countries. There the robots do save everybodies lifes.

bionhoward• 3 years ago

One time in med school we had a lecture by the da Vinci surgeon guy, and of course I had to stick my hand up. “Will there ever come a time when the human hand cannot keep up with the instrument?” The whole room (200 people) laughed out loud, and the surgeon said, “No.”

jwilk• 3 years ago

What do you mean by "cannot keep up with the instrument"?

dredmorbius• 3 years ago

John Henry: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)>

richk4494• 3 years ago

Anyone know more about robot assist systems in general? Are there similar systems for performing delicate assembly operations on a production line? (Non medical)

The die binders that I used to use had physical motion reduction systems - are there more general versions of these available?

rurban2• 3 years ago

I do work for the competition (medical).

There should be, but no idea

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

You don't probably want delicate assembly operations on production lines. You do everything possible in designing what ever you are building to not do them.

On other hand, multi-axial CNC machines and various welding robots are quite amazing.

arcticbull• 3 years ago

The whole sub specialty of design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) helps us avoid the need for humans in robot exoskeletons on the assembly line.

robotresearcher5• 3 years ago

“Surgeon removes tumor using current best practices” doesn’t sound so exciting, but is actually more amazing. These devices have made some hard surgeries much more doable.

capableweb2• 3 years ago

In this case, it's about a "inoperable tumor" so I'm guessing a human hand wouldn't be able to do it at all. That's what makes this particular case more amazing.

vorticalbox2• 3 years ago

The article states it would have required breaking the jaw in two.

So it was doable but as the article states "no one was lining up"

CuriousCosmic• 3 years ago

Well only if you don't consider the surgeon who operated the davinci robot.

Not to diminish this case at all but people kinda misinterpret how surgical robots operate. They are less like CNC robots where you program in a control path before hand and the robot follows it. Rather they are like a set of "prosthetic" tools that allow you to stabilize your movements and shrink them down to extremely small motions beyond the precision human hands are capable of.

It still takes an extremely skilled human surgeon at the controls at all points of the surgery to make this possible, these are just tools that give those surgeons more fidelity and stability in their motions.

No less amazing in the slightest but make no mistake that this surgery was performed by a human, just with a far more advanced kit of scalpels and forceps.

iancmceachern12• 3 years ago

I really don't like these kinds of headlines.

The medical professionals are the real heros here. If the da Vinci system had just come out and this was some new capability I would understand. In this case the headline should say "surgical staff saves life of inoperable patient using standard surgical quality of care and using device that has been available on the.market for 15 years".

It's one thing to say "new Invention of the automobile saves life of first ambulance passenger" and another to say, today, the same thing.

vasco2• 3 years ago

The hero talk is really cringy. Other than that, it's not going to be long until we don't need anyone controlling it and for us to find it barbaric that we used to expose ourselves to factors like "trembling hands" or other such nonsense inside our guts.

iancmceachern12• 3 years ago

I think someone going above and beyond to literally save another's life, despite incredible odds, is the definition of a hero. What's cringe about that?

There are two sides to this coin.

It's the classic do we want to keep a human in the loop, or not. By your same point we could argue that robots are more efficient killing machines, so let's make autonomous killing robots.

Back to surgery, there are lots of reasons you want a surgeon in the loop. There are lots if things that robots can do better too (like your tremor example). The key, like many things, is in the shade of grey in between, not the extreme arguments on both sides.

I stand by calling that surgical staff heros, and also think that the future of (good) surgery lies in the combination of skilled medical professional and machine, not the replacement of skilled professionals by machines.

Disclaimer: I work in this space

Incipient• 3 years ago

Maybe "hero" is over the top, but "star of the show" would be appropriate.

And I'm sure we'll get to autonomous surgery at some stage, but we can't even get autonomous driving right, and I feel like surgery is even more precise and potentially dynamic.

appplication• 3 years ago

it's not going to be long until we don't need anyone controlling it and for us

We’re realistically (many) decades away from this in the earliest case. AI is cool, but literally giving one a scalpel and allowing it to excise a tumor is so far beyond both what our present technology and regulatory safeguards will realistically facilitate within most of the lifetime of anyone alive.

I do admire your optimism, but I can’t help but think it’s a little misplaced. We have collectively billions of miles driven for self-driving cars and they still can’t reliably distinguish a red light in suboptimal conditions. And somehow a machine is going to slice us open and perform a surgery than even our most skilled surgeons are not reliably performing (let alone generating training data for). Not to mention the human body is an insanely complex, variable, and messy environment where even little mistakes can be life ending.

I understand that exponential growth in AI is difficult to comprehend. But fully autonomous surgery is just likely not on the bingo sheet for this century. It’s several orders of magnitude more complex and high stakes than just about every other task AI can take on.

porkbeer• 3 years ago

The controls on the da vinci are absolute shite. Congrats to the very skilled surgeon, not this useless advert of an article.

markwkw• 3 years ago

I just had a thought. A thin robotic worm. Can squeeze through and around important organs/vassels. When its head reaches the tumor it gently chews and siphons the tumor. I’m imagining tiny mechanical jaws just for cool effect

xwdv• 3 years ago

I thought most tumors could be operable soon by destroying them with some kind of focused ultrasonic energy at a specific point?

lr1970• 3 years ago

Robotic laryngectomy has been around for several years already and is quite common in the US.

Source: my wife participates in these surgeries.

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

"It's the man, not the machine."* - Chuck Yeager

* "Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless."**

It's the man and the machine together as a super-organism.

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifleman%27s_Creed

Disclaimer: I played with a Da Vinci prototype sewing grapes but I'm definitely no surgeon. My hands shake more than someone with Parkinson's. I cannot fathom subsequent generations of refinements in steadier hands with surgical experience. Clarke's third law applies here. Although, I wonder before how long AI and mechatronics will receive credit for simple veterinary surgeries as a testbed on the path to a truly miraculous, sci-fi "surgical chamber".

Da Vinci robot surgeon removes inoperable tumor, saving patient’s life

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