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Less trauma, greater benefit through minimally invasive surgery
Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology Department
of Defense: $3.05M
For decades, surgery meant large incisions through skin and muscles,
extensive dissection and lengthy hospital stays. But recent innovations
are revolutionizing the operating room environment. UCLA’s
Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT)
represents a unique collaboration involving the Department of Surgery,
campus bioengineers and nanoscientists, and companies that create
these new technologies to make surgeries more efficient, less invasive
and safer.
CASIT’s focal point is an 800-square-foot “operating room of the
future,” a combination think tank and training facility where UCLA researchers
and their partners can simulate new procedures and communicate, through teleconferencing,
with trainees watching on big-screen monitors or with surgeons at remote sites.
Minimally invasive surgery capitalizes on advances
in optics, instrument design and imaging, with the result being
less pain and trauma to patients, quicker recovery, and equal or
better results for surgery in a variety of specialties. Among the
most promising of these technologies are robotic instruments that
can be used by trained surgeons to make more precise movements
than they could by hand, thanks to a system that filters hand tremor,
allows better range of motion and amplifies the video image in
3-D to facilitate more precise movements.
 Future
of Surgery video [Real Media, 3 minutes 11 seconds]
Robotic
surgery on cutting edge (UCLA Today story) |
