Consider that a first-generation use. The robot already is being tested on trickier surgeries, including heart bypasses and heart valve replacements performed through three incisions each about the diameter of a pencil. FDA Commissioner Jane Henney said. Today, surgeons do those procedures minimally invasively by sliding a tiny video camera inside the patient's body and operating with foot-long scalpels and other instruments stuck into two small incisions. It looks like they are handling long, steel chopsticks while looking up at a fuzzy videoscreen instead of down at the patient.
Laparoscopic surgery is immensely popular and surgeons can do it well.
But they complain the instruments are clumsy at best and prevent fine stitches and other micro-techniques. DA Vinci's camera uses multiple lenses to provide a three-dimensional image from inside the patient's body. The robotic arms replace those foot-long scalpels, and have a ''wrist'' built in for more humanlike flexibility. But the robotic operations took up to 50 minutes longer, in part because surgeons were not accustomed to the new technology, said Ogden, who warned that the doctors had a learning curve spotted over their first 20 patients. Already doctors are hunting for new uses for DA Vinci.