Guest Blogger - Mavin Gunter

Robotic surgery is making its way into hospitals! They call it the Da Vinci Robotic Surgery System. This new technology only requires one surgeon to move the robotic arms in the room during surgery, and uses a high-resolution camera to help find where to place incisions. The camera works better than a human’s naked eye. The four small robotic arms help make surgery less invasive. With this new technology taking off people are trying to take it to the next step. They want to start using these new computer consoles all over the world to perform operations from miles and miles away. This new step towards the future can be described as Telesurgery. Imagine your doctor all the way in Washington while you are in Georgia, and him performing a surgery on you from so far away. This technology has its many advantages for people. Some advantages would be finding the best surgeries for you and not having to leave your hometown for it, possibly cheaper health care, and the surgery itself from the robotic arms is less traumatizing. For the actual robotic surgery, the robot only needs about a three-centimeter incision to work. This can mean less scarring and faster recovery. While robotic surgery has its advantages there are a few set backs that come along with the robotic surgery. These set backs are time, cost of equipment, and if people are willing to put their lives in the hands of a robot. The timing is nearly twice the amount a normal surgery done by a doctor would take, and newer technology means millions of dollars spent on parts. The most important part to getting the robotic surgery throughout the hospitals is having the people’s trust that the machine can perform surgery, without life-threatening mistakes occurring. Therefore my question is, would you put your life in the hands of a robot?
http://www.howstuffworks.com/robotic-surgery1.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NZLpWrJGgk