The first application of Polish cardiac surgery robot next year

The operation will be performed by heart surgeon Dr. Grzegorz Religa in the W. Biegański Provincial Specialist Hospital in Łódź. The robot named Robin Heart Port Vision Able replaces the assistant. It is used to control the video channel, allowing to accurately view the operative field.

"I would like to operate using the robot as soon as possible, but it\'s not up to me. All the formalities related to documentation must be completed - certain formalities must be met before any device can be used in humans" - Dr. Grzegorz Religa told PAP in Zabrze.

Two-day conference "Medical Robots 2016" at the Zbigniew Religa Foundation for the Development of Cardiac Surgery in Zabrze, which is developing the Polish medical robot, is an opportunity to summarize the achievements and present plans.

"Robots will not replace doctors. The role of the surgeon is to make decisions, skills are secondary, the most important thing is the ability to make decisions and a robot will not do that, not in the foreseeable future" - believes Dr. Religa.

"What a robot can do is replace tools, be a more perfect tool in the hands of a surgeon. This is the inevitable future and if we do not want to fall behind again, we must try to keep up" - he added.

The robot\'s chief engineer Dr. Zbigniew Nawrat emphasised that the next stages of work on this device would include gripping and cutting tools, as well as building a surgical robot arm with variable, controlled rigidity and geometry, similar to octopus tentacle.

"Such arm would be extremely useful in surgery of the abdomen, where - bending in different directions - it would have to avoid many obstacles, and stiffen after reaching its destination" - explained Zbigniew Nawrat.

The Foundation for Cardiac Surgery Development participates in the international project devoted to this issue since January 2012. Biocybernetics Laboratory of the Foundation\'s Heart Prosthesis Institute is responsible for the robot testing system (station for operation planning and training for surgeons and station for technical testing of the robot), as well as the robot\'s control console.

The project "Stiff-Flop: STIFFness controllable Flexible and Learn-able Manipulator for surgical OPerations" is implemented under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. In addition to the Zabrze Foundation, 11 international partners participate; from the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Israel and Poland.

Founded by eminent cardiac surgeon Prof. Zbigniew Religa, the Foundation for Cardiac Surgery Development, which now bears his name, supports the development of the Polish cardiac surgery, introducing modern techniques and technologies for the treatment of heart into clinical practice. The main directions of its activity are research on prosthetic heart, prosthetic heart valves, research in biocybernetics and biotechnology.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

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