Abstract
Incorporation of new technologies advances surgery in general. One example is robot assistance which can potentially overcome limitations in accessibility, dexterity, and ergonomics, thereby improving outcome of surgical procedures. To date, robot assistance has been used successfully in various fields of surgery. Also, in microsurgery robot assistance could offer great advantages as it requires great precision and meticulous technique. Currently available surgical robotic platforms are primarily designed for endoscopic procedures and lack the specific requirements for true microsurgery. Therefore, plastic surgeons of the Maastricht University Medical Center (Maastricht, the Netherlands) teamed up with engineers from the Eindhoven University of Technology (Eindhoven, the Netherlands) and developed the first dedicated robotic platform for (super)microsurgery, the MicroSure Robot (MSR).Level of evidence: Level V, therapeutic study.
Highlights
Surgical interventions are demanding processes, which require agile decision-making and meticulous execution
The development of the MicroSure Robot (MSR) was primarily focused on improving the surgeons’ performance by filtering tremor and scaling movements, while at the same time being integrated into the existing workflow and infrastructure in the operating theatre
The robot is entirely covered in sterile draping, except for the sterilized adapters that can be loaded with genuine microsurgical instruments. This feature of the robotic platform allows the surgeon to use his or her preferred original instruments and skill set yet having the additional benefits of tremor filtration and motion scaling
Summary
Surgical interventions are demanding processes, which require agile decision-making and meticulous execution. The first Food and Drug Administration–approved robot was the da Vinci Surgical System (Intuitive Surgical, Inc.) which has been used successfully in various surgical specialties, such as cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, and urology [3,4,5,6]. This robotic system was designed for endoscopic surgery and has been successfully used for endoscopic harvesting and in setting of flaps [7, 8]. In a mini-muscle TRAM-flap breast reconstruction, the arterial anastomosis on the internal mammary artery was performed using robot assistance. The limited optic magnification and the bulky and powerful instruments of the system were significant drawbacks for use in true microsurgery
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