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June 3, 2007

First Live Robotic Kidney Removal Surgery at the AUA

I was honored to be chosen by Intuitive Surgical to perform the first live robotic kidney removal surgery at this years American Urologic Association conference (press release). This was the second year in a row that I have been chosen to perform l a live surgery.

Intuitive has been broadcasting live surgeries for 3 years now. I was one of 3 surgeons to perform a dvP (robotic prostatectomy) at the 2006 AUA convention. This year there were 4 live dvPs and my nephrectomy.

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December 18, 2006

Haptics in the news
"It always helps to be able to feel what you are doing, to feel the tissue tension and to feel the force when manipulating a suture," says Domenico Savatta, chief of minimally invasive and robotic urology surgery at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. "Haptics would make it easier to learn robotic surgery, operate on things that are very delicate, and be an overall advantage to have in the system."

 

Source: Technology Review: Surgical Robots Get a Sense of Touch

This was a nice review in technology review, by Brittany Sauser.

I appreciate the chance to stress the importance of what haptics will mean to robotic surgery.

Currently I have learned to rely on a highly magnified image and what I call, "visual haptics". Having a 10 times magnified image with a camera that is a few inches away from the surgical field allows me to see the tension in tissue. I await the day when I can combine the visual haptics with touch.

I learned from this article that the team at John Hopkins is working on a visual haptic system that has dots that can change colors as a marker of tension.

I remember reading about a system that worked on auditory haptics, where a sound would increase in intensity with increasing tension.

Posted by Domenico Savatta, M.D. | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) | | |