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Cutting-edge operating theatre to transform healthcare in Scotland

(The Scotsman 20/11/2009)

While the surgeon's favourite show tunes blare out from an iPod dock, the patient's insides will be beamed on to high-definition flatscreen televisions as well as to students around the world as Edinburgh Royal Infirmary meets the Starship Enterprise. Yesterday, the state-of-the-art Endoalpha operating room was formally opened at the infirmary where pioneering keyhole surgery, in which surgeons perform an operation through tiny incisions on the body, will take place.

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Robot revolution

(BBC 09/09/2009)

Within ten years some doctors and scientists are predicting that all surgery could be scarless. They say by using the natural orifices of the body and the body's own natural scar the belly-button (or umbilicus), it will be possible to insert robots into the body which can help perform every surgical procedure. It sounds fantastical, but prototypes are already in existence that can crawl and swim inside the body taking pictures of difficult to access areas.

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Scarless surgery

(BBC 13/07/2009)

"After 27 years of pain, this surgery has solved the problem in just a few hours". Estelle Rolinson is one of the latest patients to undergo pioneering "scarless" surgery (for duplex kidney). She has had part of her kidney removed through her belly button, by a technique known as single incision laparoscopic "key-hole" surgery (SILS). Once the belly button is sewn up, only the tiniest scar remains.

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Belly button surgery cuts scars

(BBC 22/06/2009)

A London surgeon is pioneering virtually scarless surgery to remove organs through the belly button. Mr Barry Paraskeva was the first surgeon in the UK to remove an appendix and gall bladder through the navel, using laparoscopic "key-hole" surgery. Traditionally, these organs have been removed by making three incisions in the torso as well as the belly button - a process which leaves scars. Mr Paraskeva is based at Imperial College London Healthcare NHS Trust.

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Hospital hails 'scarless' success

(BBC 12/05/2009)

Aberdeen Royal Infirmary has become the first in Europe to remove a spleen using a "virtually scarless" single keyhole technique, it has been claimed. The single incision laparoscopic surgery (Sils) was performed by Prof Zyg Krukowski and Irfan Ahmed. They used one 15mm incision just below the left rib cage. Mr Ahmed said: "Removing a spleen using this novel technique is a more challenging operation because of its unique location in the body."

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Tiny motors may be big in surgery

(BBC 20/01/2009)

Miniaturisation of motors has not kept pace with that of electronics, leaving such tiny robots with no means to get around in the body. Now, research reported in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering has demonstrated a motor about twice the size of a human hair. The motors could be used to power mini robots to fly around inside the body.

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