by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | March 07, 2014
From the March 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The latest addition to the system is the da Vinci Single-Site Instrumentation, which involves inserting flexible instruments through the belly button to remove the gallbladder. It was manufactured in late 2011 and it received FDA-clearance last year.
This system is currently the only robotic system on the market used for soft tissue laparoscopy and according to Intuitive, it assists about 85 to 90 percent of prostatectomies. However, other robots are widely used in different surgeries including cardiovascular, head and neck, urological and partial knee replacement surgery.
When Corindus’s CorPath 200 System was cleared by the FDA and commercially sold through Philips Healthcare in late 2012, it became the world’s first robotic-assisted system to treat obstructed coronary arteries non-invasively. During surgery, an interventional cardiologist sits in a cockpit and uses a touch-screen and joystick to control a robotic arm that measures the movement of guide wires, balloons and stent catheters.
With the help of this technology, surgeons are able to open arteries and restore blood flow in patients with coronary artery disease. About 20 facilities in the U.S. have purchased it and several have ordered a second unit.
Other robots on the market include MAKO Surgical Corp.’s RIO, which aligns and places implants for partial knee and total hip arthroplasty, Mazor Robotic’s Renaissance, which is a guidance system for spine surgery, and Hansen Medical’s Sensei, which treats atrial fibrillation.
These robots allow for minimally invasive procedures and with a few small incisions, patients are able to get out of the hospital quicker with less scarring and fewer complications.
Minimally invasive surgical devices have infiltrated the market in the past few years because of the increasing demand to perform surgery that reduces complications and recovery time. According to a MarketsandMarkets report, the global minimally invasive surgical market was estimated at 23 billion dollars in 2011 and will have an annual growth rate of about 8 percent over the next five years.
“That’s an advantage for the patient but it’s also an advantage for the hospital in that when they’re using their facilities more efficiently they can put more patients through their post-operative bed and they can do more procedures,” says Catherine Mohr, director of medical research at Intuitive Surgical.
Imag(in)e this
Siemens Healthcare and GE Healthcare have new imaging systems on the market, which could have a huge impact in the hybrid operating room. Siemens’ system uses robotic technology that lets the physicians move the C-arm to almost any position around the patient and GE’s system is mobile so physicians can perform procedures with unrestricted access to patients.
