Find in News Talk Sites Images For advanced search options, click here . Subscribe for free email updates . Click here to sign up, or log in . Thanks to recent technological innovations, it turns out that for some procedures the best surgeon may be a robot with a steadier hand than a human's. A mini-surgical robot, developed by mechanical engineering professor Moshe Shoham of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, is currently being tested in human knee replacement surgeries without the guidance of a physician's hand.
Orthopedic procedures involving rigid bone particularly lend themselves to automated surgery.
The unshakeable robotic hand does the rest. The precision of robotic surgery has the potential of greatly reducing this figure. Though robots are currently in use for hip replacements and to hold cameras steady inside the body during laparoscopic surgery, Shoham says the unique design of his device enables it to be smaller and more accurate than similar systems. Further, the system performs by itself, without assistance from a surgeon. It also allows it to be made so small that it can be mounted directly on the operating table, alongside the patient.