Man Vs. Machine

In today’s day and age of surgery, the question of “man vs. machine” has taken a stance in medical journals and hospitals around the world. To be quite honest, the idea of having tiny, matrix-like surgical robots pulling organs in and out from a patient’s body and performing sutures at lightning speed is not all that unthinkable. In only 3,500 years we’ve gone from ancient Egypt where physicians performed complete invasive surgeries with little anesthesia on the patient’s side to today where laparoscopic surgery is more or less a standard for many procedures. Consider: just two years ago Nasa worked on a project with the American medical company Virtual Incision to design and develop a robot that can be placed inside a patient’s body then be controlled remotely by a trained surgeon. Whether we are comfortable with it or not, surgical technology is always advancing and becoming more developed. With that, I’d argue that interested surgeons have to reflect seriously upon the ever-shifting profession and the direction that it is headed to be confident that medicine is their calling. Now that isn’t to say that anytime soon we’ll see robot physicians scouring hospital hallways and the medical school going extinct. Clearly, the human brain is able to think and operate in a way that today’s robots are not able to. As stated in a recent news article, “We need to deal with these new surgical technologies in order to make everyone understood that they extend the capabilities of surgeons instead of replacing them.” However, technology is becoming well developed enough to change the game of surgery at least a bit. To make my point heard, take a look at the following three inventions that are representative of what is on the horizon in terms of future surgical technology:

Virtual Reality

In April of 2016 at the Royal London hospital, Shafi Ahmed became the first surgeon in the history of medicine to perform a surgery using a virtual reality camera. His task was to remove a cancerous tissue from the bowel of his patient. With such technology, anyone and everyone around the world could witness the operation in real time and through the eyes of two 360 degree cameras. The operation was made public through a number of platforms such as the internet and apps. From an educational standpoint, this opens a window of possibilities in terms of making a medical education more accessible and vivid to the masses. In today’s system, medical students, interns, and residents are often times left to peeking over the shoulder of an attending surgeon during a given operation. A better view via virtual reality cameras could mean a better education, and a future class of more thorough surgeons. A teaser demonstrating the potential of virtual reality can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=hadmR2tvcsI

Surgical Robots

For years, surgical robots have been at the forefront of surgery and it’s safe to say that the demand for them is going to shoot through the roof. According to recent reporters, “By 202, surgical robotics sales are expected to almost double to $6.4 billion.” Arguably the most commonly known surgical robot is the “da Vinci Surgical System”, which was introduced roughly 17 years ago and is pictured above. It’s prize qualities include having a magnified 3D high-definition vision system and tiny wristed instruments that are able to bend and rotate even greater and more effectively than the human hand. With this equipment, surgeons are in complete control and able to perform intricate operations by only making a few small invasions, which limits patient risk and post-surgery pain. More recently, Google and Johnson&Johnson have taken this idea a step further by collaborating on creating a new surgical robot system similar to the da Vinci System, but that is smaller in size and able to work more precisely with highly detailed and fragile tissues.

3D Printing and Simulations in Pre-Operative Planning and Education

For the most complicated and intricate of surgeries that last for hours and require

a hefty amount of detailed preparation, surgeons are constantly doing the most

they can do to prepare. To be frank, medical textbooks, videos, and cadavers

only go so far. To compensate, the realm of 3D printing and simulations have

emerged in the medical field. Remarkably, in just December of 2016, physicians

from the United Arab Emirates were able to use 3D printing technology to

prepare to safely remove a cancerous tumor from a kidney in a 42-year-old

woman. This technology has also begun to make an impact in medical education

because it offers students an alternative to using living human tissue to gain

some of their first surgical experiences. A pair of physicians at the University of

Rochester Medical Center (URMC) have moved forward with this concept by 3D

printing artificial organs that “look, feel, and even bleed like the real thing.” The

following video is an excellent visual of this system and the potential it holds in

medicine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7gJ4Vgr-w&feature=youtu.be

With only these few examples in mind, one can see how the future of surgery is evolving and adapting in order to take advantage of new technologies and operating techniques that can ultimately be beneficial to both the surgical team and the patient. Rather than being hesitant regarding technology and its impact in medicine, I’d like to reason that the best anyone in the field can do is embrace these advances for all they have to offer to surgery.

This following page was used as a reference for this blog post and is an excellent source for those seeking further information regarding this topic: http://medicalfuturist.com/the-technological-future-of-surgery/