December 06, 2006

• OR-Live is sadly blocked at work (and at lunchtime too! shame), but a guy from my theatre company works for this company, who make surgical robots for knee and prostate surgery. Clever stuff!* *though I hope the guys designing the system didn't also design the website
• *gomichild is so not clicking any of these links*
• The only way you could get me to not click more would be if there were a link to eye surgery.
• Man, no freaking way am I letting the robots near my taint. Bad idea. SO BAD.
• I saw a video of a knee replacement operation at our local med school. It was disturbing at first to see them taking scalpels, drills, grinders and hammers to someone's leg (and not in a delicate way). But after a few minutes the feeling wore off, the surgeon treats the human body just like a car mechanic treats a car. And it requires the same kind of manual dexterity. (You have to eye it so that you shave just enough bone out of the joint to get the new metal one to fit right). Someone in the audience asked what it took to be an orthopedic surgeon. And the doctor giving the lecture looked up and said "You have to be handy".
• I would like to see that robot arm fight the mini-gorgon in my butt.
• Old friend of mine had a girlfriend who was an orthopedic nurse. Same story here: their cart looked more like grandpa's toolbox: saws, drills, hammers... They really do need to crank on bones because they are damn strong. But the portable music system on top really made it look far too casual. "Nurse, hand me that cutoff saw, and could you crank up that Stones tune?" Ah well, a job is a job. Can't wait to get home to actually view some of these. Yay!
• I wasn't completely under during my hip operation, but all I can remmber is singing along to "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" on the OR sound ssystem.
• Home now. I have not had time to watch them all. I mean, gee, they are all 59 minutes each, but I did browse through them. Pretty clean work there, even from a non-surgeon type like me. The robotic assist for prostatectomy is about 40 minutes of panel discussion as to why using a robotic arm is far better for patient and surgeon. I'll have to wathc the whole thing soon. Thanks for the cool link!
• The only way you could get me to not click more would be if there were a link to eye surgery. I lived with a buddy who's now an opthalmalogist while he was in residency, and used to watch his videotapes of eye surgeries. They're actually fascinating, and surprisingly easy to watch--the camera is so close on the eye being worked on that you kind of lose sight that it's part of an actual person.
• Cool link, btw.
• p.s. the Acrobot(tm) prostate robot goes up the front, not the back. I'll let that sink in.
• Oh no you won't!
• They don't like it up 'em! /Corporal Jones
• the tube is quite wide
• The sedation is quite heavy.