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Surgery By Satellite Offers New Possibilities At Cutting Edge Of Medicine
London UK (SPX) Jun 11, 2007 Robotic surgery may be coming to your town. Robots that perform surgery can be driven by surgeons who no longer stand by the patient, but direct the operation from a computer console. In most cases the surgeon is seated at a console within the theatre, only a few metres away from the patient. Now a team of surgeons and scientists have shown that the surgeon and robot can be linked via a 4,000 mile Internet connection, or by satellite, reported in the journal The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery. This raises the possibility of a surgeon's expertise being made available to patients lying in surgical theatres thousands of miles away. Robots are starting to prove that they can be used to perform minimally invasive surgery with high precision. In theory there is no reason why the surgeon needs to be physically close to their patient, so long as the communication link between the console and the robotic device is fast. The problem is that there may be too much of a delay between the image of the patient being captured and being displayed on the console, or between the surgeon sending an instruction and the robot responding. A team of 11 researchers, who work jointly in the Department of Medical Biophysics, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, and CSTAR (Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics), London Health Sciences Centre, London, Ontario, Canada, set out to test whether it is possible to link the surgeon and robot by the Internet and by satellite. Their experimental surgical trials showed that the delays were much greater when they used the satellite link than using the Internet (600ms vs 55 ms respectively). But after a short period of practice, the surgeon got used to this and there were no measurable differences in the quality of the surgery using the two forms of communication. The team thinks that virtual reality prediction would also greatly aid this type of surgery. "This is an exciting next step forward in developing telesurgery, which holds the promise of many new efficient and cost-effective ways of providing advanced healthcare services," says project leader Reiza Rayman. Email This Article
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To Keep Fit In Space Best To Train Like An Athlete
Houston TX (SPX) Jun 13, 2007If one part of your car isn't properly maintained, it can affect how the entire vehicle runs - especially if you're taking a long trip. The same can be said for the human body. That's why, when it comes to fitness in space, it's important to create a program addressing the whole system, parts included. To keep astronauts healthy on long missions, researchers with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) are developing an integrated exercise program that addresses a number of the physical changes caused by microgravity. |
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