Robot Surgeons and Cryo Surgery

I was thinking about medicine, and medical technology. Specifically about surgical procedures and what I know of the state of the art.


For quite a while it has baffled me why we perform surgery on patients while they are warm, have hearts beating and lungs inflating. There's all that movement, and of course, the flowing blood, which can leak out and make a mess, etc. Further, it seems a lot of surgical procedures are under a variety of time constraints and I have heard of marathon surgical sessions where a doctor (or tag team of doctors) have performed surgery for many hours consecutively without breaks. This seems like a recipe for disaster.




I would have thought it would be better to chill a subject down to 35 degrees F, just above freezing, that way a surgeon could perform delicate surgery without the heart beating, lungs inflating or blood flowing. Additionally, the subject could be kept at that temperature, stable and without metabolic functions occurring for quite some time, most likely days (*may require some non-toxic preservative, possibly just a broad spectrum anti-biotic). This would allow surgery to be performed over time, unhurried. It would be measured and methodical. Additionally, while the tissues would not be frozen solid at 35 degrees F, they would be firmer, allowing for more precise manipulation.

So - why isn't that the normal practice today? It occurred to me that the issue might be that a human surgeon would not be able to perform delicate.. or actually even gross surgery at those temperatures. The human surgeon's fingers would lose fine motor control, there would be risk of chills and shivers causing undesired muscle contractions, and none of those effects would be tolerable in any surgery.


Gloves would not be an option because if they were thick enough to allow the human surgeon to operate without degradation of dexterity and risk of shivers, then they would be too thick for any delicate movements. If the gloves were ultra thin but somehow heated, then the heat would risk the integrity of the patient's tissues which have to be maintained at the 35 degree F temperature.

So - while attractive in theory for a variety of reasons, Cryo surgery would be impractical if the procedure was being performed by one or more human surgeons.

NOW ALL THAT CAN CHANGE

Robotic surgery has become a viable and quite successful alternative to surgical procedures performed directly by a human. Robotic surgery has allowed for procedures that a human cannot do manually due to the requirement for exactingly precise and fine movements which are not possible with a human hand and a human eye but which can be done by a human directing a robotic limb and using enhanced vision from electronic ccd cameras.




If Robotic surgery allows for procedures which a human cannot perform on their own, then a Robot should be able to perform any procedure that a human can as well. And a robot can perform at any temperature range with no change to performance capabilities.

If we combine the two concepts above -

chilling the surgical subject down to 35 (or 34 or 33, anything just north of 32) degrees F, and then use Robotic surgical systems to perform the surgery, then all procedures should see an increase in success rates, some minor procedures may not see much of a change as they are close to 100% successful now, and the cost/complexity of the cryonic process may exceed the benefit but for others the improvement should fully warrant the extra
effort.

I would further speculate that procedures performed in this manner would result in reduced recovery time and better post operative response. Inflammation should be reduced, sutures should be more precisely implemented, etc.


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