[Science Report]:Robotic Surgery


This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Science Report.

French doctors and American scientists have reported performing acomplete operation in which the doctor was outside the operatingroom. This kind of operation is known as robotic surgery.

Jacques Marescaux performed the operation last month. He removedthe gallbladder of a sixty-eight-year-old woman. Doctor Marescauxwas in an office in New York City. The patient was in a hospital inStrasbourg, France. The operation was described in the publicationNature.

A doctor in the operating room in Strasbourg prepared thepatient. The doctor placed medical instruments and a small videocamera in her stomach area. Doctor Marescaux in New York watched thepatient on a video screen. Then he moved controls that sent messagesto the robot machine in the operating room. The robot moved theinstruments that removed the woman's gallbladder. The woman fullyrecovered and left the hospital two days later.

Doctors have used similar robots in other operations. But thedoctor has never been so far away from the patient.

Experts say the main problem with such robotic surgery isguaranteeing high-speed telecommunications between the doctor andthe robot. Technology must be able to reduce the time delay betweena doctor's order to a robot to move the instruments and the robot'sactions.

Experts say successful robotic surgery will improve operations.For example, the robot can make much smaller movements than a personcan. The robot movement is steady and will never shake. A robotmachine can turn instruments in ways that a doctor's hands cannot.

Doctors say such robotic surgery will make possible safer andbetter operations in the future. They say it will improve doctortraining. It also will mean that doctors could operate on people indangerous places far away. These might include soldiers in battleareas or astronauts in space. And it could mean that people couldhave operations done by top doctors without having to travel to thecity where the doctor works.

The use of robotic surgery is now being tested in the UnitedStates. About one-hundred people have had operations using the newtechnology. They have had stomach and gallbladder operations.Doctors also are using the new technology to sew blood vesselstogether during heart operations.

This VOA Special English Science Report was written by NancySteinbach.

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