By Tom Henderson
Small Times Correspondent
DETROIT, March 12, 2002 — Researchers at the Detroit Medical Center hope to spin off a company that will design, build and sell MEMS-based probes to be used in robotic, computer-aided surgery.
According to Greg Auner, a researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, the probes will help doctors determine blood flow in tissue, allowing them to differentiate between tumor cells and normal cells, and will give them better “touch” feedback during such delicate procedures
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| Dr. Scott Langenburg, director of the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation Computer-Assisted Robot-Enhanced Surgery Program at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, performs the first computer- aided robotic surgery on a pediatric patient. |
Auner’s research group was part of a team that called a news conference recently at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit to announce what it called the first computer-aided robotic surgery on a pediatric patient.
The operation was conducted Jan. 17 on Kyle Bugdalski of Center Line, Mich., to correct gastroesophageal reflux disease, which causes serious heartburn and can lead to cancer of the esophagus.
The operation was a success and the patient has recovered.
While it wasn’t medically necessary to use a robot in this operation — it could have been done through more traditional laproscopic surgery — it did pave the way for the future, when a computer and robot will help surgeons attain greater motor control in delicate brain, spine or eye operations.
Dr. Scott Langenburg, director of the new Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation Computer-Assisted Robot-Enhanced Surgery Program at the hospital, performed the operation.
The operation used equipment provided by Computer Motion Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., including its ZEUS Robotic Surgical System. Langenburg, sitting at a console across the operating room from the patient, used a headset, computer screen and hand controls to conduct the procedure.
He used voice commands to move the small camera and light source, and the hand controls to manipulate the robot arms that held the surgical tools. The computer equipment senses the surgeon’s hand movements and scales them into precise micromovements while filtering out hand tremor.
The ZEUS technology has been used on adult patients for more than three years, said Michael Reagan, the company’s vice president, but this is the first time it had been used on a pediatric patient.
“This was one of the more complex minimally invasive surgeries we do,” Langenburg said.
“There’s a great feeling of excitement in doing things we couldn’t do before,” said Dr. Michael Klein, the hospital’s surgeon-in-chief, who assisted Langenburg in the operation. The equipment, he said, can also be used for spinal surgeries and brain and eye procedures, as soon as doctors are properly trained.
“This technology allows us to operate on microscopic structures with finely controlled movements that would otherwise be impossible,” he said.
The first operation and the current line of Computer Motion equipment does not use MEMS technology, but Langenburg, Auner and Yulin Wang, Computer Motion’s founder and chief technology officer, are applying for a $2 million grant from the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor. That grant would develop MEMS sensors to improve robotic operations.
“What’s envisioned by us is a company in Michigan to do the MEMS probes and add-on portions for these surgeries,” said Auner, the director of Wayne State’s Institute for Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems.
He said his department already has built MEMS prototypes for the next generation of robotic-surgery equipment. He said the use of such equipment, which requires approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is at least two years away.
Auner said MEMS pressure and heat sensors at the tips of surgical probes would help the physicians in minimally invasive surgeries better differentiate between types of tissues, and better apply different pressures to various procedures — a lighter touch, for example, when suturing two soft tissues together.
With MEMS devices monitoring blood flow in tissue, surgeons would have a better idea of precisely where a tumor ended, for example. They wouldn’t cut too much, or too little. “Those marginal tissues are so crucial,” Auner said.
“The ability to add on diagnostic MEMS tools will be the most important thing,” he said.
“This is an open-modular platform,” said Reagan of Computer Motion’s equipment. “As MEMS evolves, we’ll be able to unplug the outdated generation of equipment and plug in the new.”
Children’s Hospital officials say want to hold a symposium in June for pediatric surgeons worldwide to train in robotic-pediatric surgery.
They say their goal is to conduct such surgeries not just across the operating room, but also at distances of thousands of miles. An expert on pediatric heart surgery could, in theory, repair a heart birth defect in a baby thousands of miles away.
“It’s feasible right now,” Klein said. “It certainly becomes possible to do surgeries around the world. But realistically, it’s probably two to five years away.”
“You need the right equipment on the other end, of course,” Langenburg said..
The world’s first telesurgery was conducted last year, when a surgeon in New York helped remove the gall bladder of a patient in France.
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