'Supervised' robot succeeds in soft-tissue surgery

Source: AFP

Miami (AFP) - A robotic machine has succeeded at stitching two segments of a pig's bowel together, an advance for the tricky field of soft tissue surgery, researchers said Wednesday.

The machine, called the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), does not replace the need for a skilled surgeon, but acts as a tool to improve the accuracy of stitching, said the report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The study showed STAR outperformed expert surgeons and a well-known robotic surgery tool already on the market, called the da Vinci robot, which is held in the surgeon's hand and used to perform surgeries such as hysterectomies through a few small incisions.

Until now, robotic surgeries have largely relied on the expertise of the surgeon and outcomes have varied according the doctor's skill, researchers say. Soft tissue is particularly complicated because it is malleable and moveable.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/supervised-robot-succeeds-soft-tissue-surgery-184038938.html