SANTA BARBARA, California –- "Surgeons" perform a mock bypass operation on 140-year-old Luke Skywalker, who suffered an attack of angina while vacationing in Santa Barbara, while strains of Star Wars music play in the background.
This isn't Hollywood -- it’s a demonstration of the operating room of the future performed before dozens of bemused surgeons sitting on bleachers at the OR 2000 conference.
The patient was fictitious, and some of the doctors were actors, but the technologies are real. Surgeon Michael Mack, sitting at a video console and computer, expertly used robotic arms to thread tiny sutures into a pig's heart from about five yards away.
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Mack then used voice recognition technology to move a video camera, change the lights, and make phone calls to Skywalker's father, Darth Vader.
On the surface, the surgical procedure is very attractive: Using tiny cameras and remote-controlled tools, the surgeon performs open heart surgery through tiny "ports" punched in the patient's chest. The procedure spares the patient the trauma of the gaping incisions and broken sternums of present open heart surgeries.
The procedures can also be performed on beating hearts, sparing patients the risk of heart-lung machines. And the robots eliminate the slight hand tremors experienced by even the best surgeons.
Mack also had a remote video consultation with Skywalker's doctor from the Cleveland Clinic, sharing X-rays and other medical information onscreen.
"Everything here is either on the market or will shortly be introduced," said Yulun Wang, founder and chief technical officer of Computer Motion, which put on the mock operation.
Perhaps so, but even the most optimistic attendees at the show acknowledge that it will be years -- maybe even decades -- before the scenario that saves Skywalker's life is commonplace in real operating rooms.
"The biggest obstacle right now is how you justify the economic costs," said Mack, who directs the center for heart and lung transplantation at Medical City Dallas Hospital. Computer Motion's setup can run well over US$500,000 and competitor Intuitive Surgical's more user-friendly approach can cost twice that, attendees said.
The Health Care Financing Administration is currently considering whether robot-assisted heart surgery should be viewed as experimental or not, Mack said. The agency, a division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, only covers nonexperimental procedures.
