World of Virtual Surgery

We are interviewing Michael J. Van Noord, MD in General & Advanced Laparoscopic Surgeon at Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo, CA. 

 Dr. E Darracott Vaughan Jr. helps to study robotic surgery. He says, “An instrument put into the abdomen can't do what your hand can do." Their robotic surgery techniques acquire them to use nano technology to have little robotic hands work on their patients.

     We think robotic surgery can determine the future for many surgeons. We believe that this new technology is making surgery easier for the surgeons; that there won’t be any hassle with mistakes. They may be at the beginning stage of robotic surgery but we feel that in years to come this technique will be precise.

    Dr. Christopher Steffes teaches surgery at Waynes States Medical School and is a general surgeon at the Detroit Medical Center (DMC). He experiments with performing different procedures on artificial body parts. For example, he performed the removal of a tumor from a patient’s rectum. The computer that he performs his procedures on reacts in the way that a real live patient would. For example, if he’s causing discomfort to the patient, the computer will moan to let him know that he’s hurting the patient.

    We feel the computers in this video are almost as realistic to a human which helps surgeons know what to do if a situation came up. Surgeons will learn ahead of time what to do and how to change it if necessary. These computers will make it easier for surgeons and will make it less stressful if something went wrong.