Just recently, we told you about how a robotic surgeon performed successful kidney transplants in the UK. And here again, great news from Foggy Albion. This time, the robots managed to carry out a complex operation right inside the human eye. The operation was completed successfully, and the patient's vision has already begun to return. Such achievements of British surgeons look very promising, since such operations in the future can give new life to many people.
The operation was performed by professional doctors from the University of Oxford. The process involved remote-controlled medical robots Preceyes, created by the Dutch company of the same name. The need to use a robot arose because human accuracy of movements in the case of such a complex organ as the eye would not be enough. There is no place for large instruments or careless movements, one mistake and the patient can get serious irreversible damage.
Of course, robot-assisted operations are nothing new. But, as a rule, robots are involved when working with fairly large organs. In the case of the eyes, a completely different level of accuracy is needed in their movements. The 70-year-old priest of the Church of St. Mary - William Beaver became the patient who agreed to the operation using high-precision robots. His right eye could hardly see anything due to the fact that a membrane a hundredth of a millimeter thick blocked his retina. It was William who decided to become the first person to take part in such an operation.
Preceyes was originally developed specifically for particularly delicate eye surgeries. It dampens and smooths out any careless movements of the operator-surgeon, which excludes the possibility of damage to the operated organs. The doctor controls the robot using a joystick and a touch screen, and everything that happens inside the eye is displayed on screens using a microscope. The robot contains seven independent motors controlled by a computer. The accuracy of the manipulator movements is 1000th of a millimeter.
After the operation, the priest already felt improvements. Finally, his eye sees not a blurry black spot, but a full-fledged picture. The Oxford specialists hope that their successful experience will allow other medical teams around the world to begin performing similar operations.
SERGEY GRAY