Medical surgery is one of the fields that strongly benefits from robotic assistance, as it requires absolute precision. Operating on a patient’s body always involves grasping, cutting and manipulation of tissue – leaving scars and subjecting the patient to pain. To minimize such side effects, minimally invasive surgery has become a standard procedure. It is the first method of choice for many
operations such as removing the spleen, the appendix or cancer tissue. In contrast to ”ordinary” surgeries, minimally invasive surgery usually involves only a few incisions for a camera, illumination, scalpels and other instruments on endoscopes. Yet, although so-called ”laparoscopic” techniques boomed for relatively simple operations during the 1980s and 1990s, minimally invasive surgery was long thought to be too risky for more complicated procedures.

This has changed since the American company Intuitive Surgical introduced telerobotic surgery. Their daVinci^® surgical system consists of a console that allows the surgeon to be comfortably seated while operating, a patient-side cart with three or four robotic arms, several endoscopic instruments and a 3-D-vision system. All of the surgeon’s hand movements are translated into smaller and more precise movements of tiny instruments such as scalpels, scissors or needle holders that are fixed to the system arms, which are able to rotate far more than the human wrist while under visual view and control of the surgeon.

It is here that SCHOTT’s contribution comes in: ”SCHOTT provides the surgeon’s light,” explains Ralf Daferner, Division Manager Medical at SCHOTT’s Lighting and Imaging Business Unit. “Intuitive’s newest system now benefits from the eco-friendly PURAVIS® glass optical fibers. These high-performance fibers are produced without using lead, antimony and arsenic. And they guarantee a pure white light transmission over a long length right into the patient’s body.” Besides, SCHOTT’s PURAVIS^® fibers are very robust, which saves hospitals a lot of money in the long run. This is achieved through excellent chemical stability, which is particularly important for medical reprocessing or cleaning. This allows medical instruments to be sterilized much more often than those equipped with conventional fibers – a fact which is very important in a hospital where sterile instruments are crucial to prevent infections in the operation theater. ”SCHOTT’s light guides are an indispensable part of Intuitive Surgical’s robotic surgery systems,” says Hanuschik. ”They provide the exact lighting the surgeon needs to safely distinguish between different types of tissue and do this reliably for a very long time.”

With lighting solutions and robotic surgical systems becoming ever more sophisticated, Hanuschik believes that robotic surgery will soon become the standard of care for many more complex operations. ”The future of minimally invasive operations lies in robotic surgery,” Hanuschik says. ”Physicians worldwide have used the daVinci^® System successfully in approximately 1.5 million surgical procedures to date. Among them are renowned clinics such as New York University Medical Center, USC University Hospital in Los Angeles, and hundreds more. We will continue to improve it, thus changing the surgical experience for people all around the world.” <