The company Medical Microinstruments recently provided a Symani surgical system that helped to successfully save a patient’s limb from amputation. The patient had sustained a traumatic event that resulted in the physicians recommending the limb be amputated. The Symani system is a robot with two arms flexible enough to be moved to work on any body part to conduct microsurgeries. For this operation, the robot needed to restore the tiny connections of blood vessels and nerves for the limb to function similar to the way it did before the event. The system was successful in restoring the blood flow. There was considerable scar tissue that the robot was able to work through to make the connections. This would not have been possible without the robot because of the smallness of the connections, and human hands are not able to work with such small parts of the anatomy. There are other uses for this system, including congenital malformation, free-flap reconstruction, lymphatic surgeries, peripheral nerve repairs, and replantation. It also reduced deep thrombosis by 50% in preclinical studies. All of these surgeries are expected to be easier for a robot that can work with smaller anatomical parts.
If you are interested in learning more about this latest success story in robots and helping save limbs, you can read the full article at MMI’s Surgical Robot Saves Person’s Arm from Amputation.