IKNIFE SURGERY
If anybody thought of going into the operation theater fills with trauma and fear of surgical instruments, the needles and knife's cutting edges. General anesthesia or partial anesthesia may minimize the pain but still they are problematic.
Whenever surgery is advised by the doctor the patient gets naturally the presurgical trauma and fear.
The history of surgery dates back to dark and more invasive methods. Ancient Egyptians drill holes into the living person's skull to cure a headache, migraine, convulsions, and to correct a fracture.
In ancient times a cataract surgery was carried out by passing a hook through the pupil without an anesthetic. Leeches were used to suck the blood which lets out during the surgery. Now these gruesome and invasive surgical operations become past history. Thank God as at present the surgery becomes mostly noninvasive by the inventions of most modern instruments such as Laparoscopy, and laser instruments. Even a heart transplant is now relatively routine. A gallbladder can easily be removed through a keyhole surgery by using a laparoscope.
A laparoscope is a small tube with a light source and camera which is inserted through a keyhole into the body until it reaches the relevant part. The areas that to be operated, show up on the screen.
Minimally invasive surgery involves, small incision, less scar, lower risk of infections, a reduced period of convalescence, and a shorter stay in hospitals.
ARTEMIS OR ROBOTIC OPERATIONS
In July 2000 a team of scientists in Germany developed an operating system with two robotic arms which are controlled by a surgeon at a control console. They called it Artemis.
In the same 2000, the first Robotic Surgical System was approved in the US by the FDA. They called it by the name The Da Vinci System.
The system contains three components.
1.A vision cart with a light source and cameras
2.A master console where the surgeon sits
3.A movable cart with two instrument arms and the camera arm.
The camera provides a true 3-D image displayed above the surgeon's hands so that the tips of the instruments seem like an extension of the control grips.
Foot pedals control extra cautionary, camera focus, instrument and camera arm clutches, and master control grips that drive the servant robotic arms at the patient side.
But still, there are drawbacks in the robotic surgery with reports of malfunctions, and errors which sometimes fatal. Hence these methods to not satisfied by everyone else.
ELECTROSURGICAL KNIVES
As days are passing the surgical science improves with higher technology to minimize the complications of surgery.
Electrosurgical knives are invented in 1920 and are used to remove cancerous tumors. The electrical knives are working by using an electric current it rapidly heats the body tissue and cutting it by minimal blood loss. Yet the instrument needs to be improved as the older electrical knives and the doctors' eyes cannot many times differentiate the cancerous cells from the noncancerous healthy cells.
In 2013 a continuous research on this has given the fruit by the finding of an Iknife with the expected result.
The Iknife by using mass spectrometry can enable the surgeon to examine biological tissue by pairing up electrosurgery.
In mass spectrometry electrically charged ions are passed through the electric or magnetic fields. These processes can distinguish between tissues of different combinations by the calculation of mass to charge measurements. The method is known as chemical profiling.
By analizing the chemical composition of different tissues, it can easily identify which tissues are healthy and which are not.
Mechanisms of the Iknife
Cutting with the electrical knife causes the tissue to vaporize and produce smoke. This smoke is sucked and passed through connected a mass spectrometer which analyzes the vapor to its chemical mass. By matching the results to a reference index, the surgeon can identify the type of tissue within 3 seconds.
The reference index has been made by Dr.Takas and his team by taking and comparing thousands of cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. From these samples they created the data index of 1624 cancerous and 1309 non-cancerous entries for matching samples in the future.
In future the Iknife can be used to analyze mucous membranes, and the respiratory, urinogenital, and gastrointestinal systems.
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