Surgical Robots Provide Helping “Hands” in the OR

As human beings become more comfortable sharing their space with robots, we can expect that robotic technologies will infiltrate even more aspects of our lives. For the past decade or so, robotic systems for surgery have been tested, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and used successfully to perform operations that previously required highly invasive surgical procedures. Robotic systems have been used in tens of thousands of procedures including general, urologic, gynecologic, and cardiac procedures such as mitral valve repair.