Recently, the website of MIT Science and Technology Review in the United States reported a report on the injury caused by robot surgery, which was published in arXiv, the world's largest preprint. A group of researchers from Rush University School of Medicine, University of Illinois and Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that from 2000 to 20 13, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recorded 10624 robotic medical accidents. Among them, 806 1 case, accounting for 75.9%. 139 1 patient was injured by robot during operation. The last disturbing figure is that about 144 robot medical accidents directly or indirectly lead to the death of patients, although this proportion only accounts for 65438+ of medical accidents. With the rapid increase of robot surgery, it is obviously necessary to design a safer and more reliable intelligent robot doctor. From 2007 to 20 13 years alone, more than170,000 patients in the United States experienced robotic surgery. Generally speaking, these robots will perform some minimally invasive surgery, from simple gynecological and urological surgery to more complicated colon cancer, cardiovascular disease and neck surgery.

So, is the Da Vinci robot system mentioned above safe and reliable? The US Food and Drug Administration also made statistics. The data shows that in just 20 13 years, the US Food and Drug Administration received more than 3,600 adverse reports of Da Vinci's robotic surgery, exceeding the sum of the previous two years. In fact, these data do not include those undisclosed events. If you add these data, the number of medical accidents may be several times that of now. It can be seen that the security risks of robot surgery are becoming more and more prominent.

The risks brought by robot surgery are mainly manifested in the following aspects. For example, during the operation, medical equipment will suddenly fall, the machine will be damaged, parts will fall off, burn or fall into the patient's body, and sometimes the robot will emit an arc, which may be fatal to the patient. In addition, the robot will also have system and image failures, and once the attending physician is difficult to distinguish, medical accidents will begin to appear.

However, if you think it is dangerous for robots to operate, you are wrong. In addition to facing up to the security risks brought by robot doctors, it has great advantages in many aspects, which is why robot doctors are more popular. For example, they can break through the physiological limits of ordinary doctors, such as arm flexibility, blind field of vision, muscle fatigue and so on. Robot doctors can operate on patients without fatigue, but human doctors may not. Therefore, robot doctors are superior in surgical efficiency. In addition, it is difficult for human beings to overcome the tremor during the operation, especially when they are tired, the muscle groups on their arms will tremble involuntarily. For fine surgery, these slight tremors may be the key to the success or failure of the operation. Robot doctors do not have these physical obstacles, so they can complete the operation very accurately.

The history of robot doctors

On the other hand, why do robot doctors have so many problems? Perhaps it is because the development history of robotic surgery system is too short, and there are still many problems that have not been solved. 1983, the world's first robot doctor, Arthrobot, was born in Vancouver. Initially used in plastic surgery, then used in clinical surgery. At that time, robots were still a new thing, and National Geographic made a documentary about it. But what really familiarized ordinary people with robots was the film "Artificial Intelligence" made by the famous American director Spielberg in 200 1 year. It has brought a wave of artificial intelligence to the whole world, but in the medical field, this wave has already begun to blow.

Once the joint robot came out, other countries in the world were scrambling to develop their own robot doctors. Imperial College London in London, England, IBM in the United States and even NASA in the United States all participated in the research and development of robot doctors. In 2006, the world's first truly intelligent robot doctor came out and successfully operated on a 34-year-old arrhythmia patient. It performs better than ordinary surgeons, because its "brain" is already full of 10000 such cases. However, among the intelligent robotic surgery systems, the Da Vinci robotic system is very popular. The system was developed by Intuitive Surgical, an American medical device company, and was approved to enter the market by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2000. China also introduced the first Da Vinci robot in 2006.

Robot doctors have only been around for more than 20 years. Robot surgery can really bring us many benefits. They are more accurate and stable than ordinary surgeons, and the infection rate of patients during surgery is also lower. They also greatly reduce the work of doctors. But while enjoying the convenience brought by robot doctors, we should also see the hidden dangers of robot doctors. We urgently need to redesign a more advanced and safer surgical robot. In addition, it is necessary to reduce the operating costs of robots. At present, tens of thousands of surgical expenses have made many people sigh.