Chennai’s SIMS Hospital showcases robot surgeon

The SIMS Hospital in Vadapalani, Chennai, has showcased a roving surgical robot that is capable of performing intricate surgeries, while also giving visitors and staff a feel of cutting edge advancements in surgery.

Manufactured by California-based Intuit Surgical Inc, the robot will be on display until evening of 1 December 2016. Made available in India by Vattikuti Technologies, the da Vinci robot will tour across 20 cities over the next few months.

With four arms, the da Vinci robot uses two arms to perform surgeries while one arm carries two miniature cameras whose 3 dimensional output is displayed on a console. This console serves as surgeon's operating table from where he manoeuvres various surgical instruments with two joystick like controls.

The fourth arm serves as an assistant to the remaining arms. Through 10-12 millimetre incisions (size of a ballpen), the four arms slide into the body to perform the surgery.

"With nearly 40 hospitals already using this technology for surgery in the metro cities, we felt it was the right time to take it to other cities. We expect better appreciation of robotic surgery and its benefits as surgeons can touch and feel the robot and experience its use," said Gopal Chakravarthy, CEO, Vattikuti Technologies.

"Robotic surgery scores over conventional surgery as it enables a high degree of precision and minimises blood loss, drastically reducing the post-operative recovery time and costs," the company said.

The robot has already been showcased at Sri Ramchandra Medical College & Hospital, Chennai; PSG Institute of Medical Sciences & Research and the Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital in Coimbatore and Vidharba Surgeons' Conference in Nagpur. Over the next few quarters, it will be taken to major Tier-2 cities in India.

The Da Vinci Xi robot costs as  much as €2.8 million and robot surgeons have already joined the team of surgeons in the University Hospital Limerick (UHL) in the US and has successfully performed surgeries.

The first 29 patients who have undergone robotic surgery in the hospital recovered twice as fast as those who had conventional procedures, says a report.

Post-operative recovery is twice as fast, with an average post-operative hospital stay of approximately four days.