A robot with a pair of'pinching claws' attached to two humanoid-shaped arms is used to perform hysterectomies, which is the removal of the uterus, in three US medical facilities. Called Hominis, this surgical system is operated by a human controller who maneuvers the robotic arms while watching the procedure happening on a screen in real time. The robot features shoulders, elbow and wrist joints to provide human human level dexterity and 360-degree articulation. An additional arm guides a laparoscopic video camera through a small, separate incision, to help visualize the internal procedure. Hominis enters through the vagina to perform the hysterectomy and then wraps its arms around the uterus to perform the operation.

Dr. Stephen Szabo, an OB/GYN with Pinehurst Surgical Clinic (PSC), reached a milestone on Thursday, Sept. 19 with his 805th robotic surgery -- a hysterectomy with sacrocolpopexy and bladder suspension. Dr. Szabo first performed a robotically-assisted surgery in 2006 after coming to Pinehurst Surgical in 1998. He and Pinehurst Surgical Urologists Dr. Robert Chamberlain and Dr. Greg Griewe, along with Dr. Walter Fasolak, from FirstHealth's Southern Pines Women's Center, formed the core group of physicians who spearheaded the introduction of robotic surgery in Moore County. With 805 surgeries complete, Dr. Szabo is now in the company of an elite and distinguished group of surgeons practicing the art of robotic-assisted healthcare. The minimally invasive approach means that advanced gynecologic surgeries, which would have resulted in a three-to-five-day hospital stay, now only require a stay of three to five hours -- and carry a reduced risk of complications or infection.

Mary Scott Hodgin/WBHM 90.3 hide caption Across the country, surgeons are learning to use more than just scalpels and forceps. In the past decade, a growing number of medical institutions have invested in the da Vinci robot, the most common device used to perform robot-assisted, or robotic, surgery. Compared to traditional open surgery, robotic surgery is minimally invasive and recovery time is often shorter, making the technology attractive to patients and doctors. But the da Vinci surgical system is expensive, costing as much as $2 million, and recent studies show that for certain procedures it can sometimes lead to worse long-term outcomes than other types of surgery. Even so, the robot has become common practice in some specialties, such as urology and gynecology, and that growth is expected to continue, which means more surgeons are learning to use the device.

It is the most exacting of surgical skills: tying a knot deep inside a patient's abdomen, pivoting long graspers through keyhole incisions with no direct view of the thread. Trainee surgeons typically require 60 to 80 hours of practice, but in a mock-up operating theatre outside Cambridge, a non-medic with just a few hours of experience is expertly wielding a hook-shaped needle – in this case stitching a square of pink sponge rather than an artery or appendix. The feat is performed with the assistance of Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot, which could be used in NHS operating theatres for the first time later this year if approved for clinical use. Versius is one of a handful of advanced surgical robots that are predicted to transform the way operations are performed by allowing tens or hundreds of thousands more surgeries each year to be carried out as keyhole procedures. "The vast majority of patients, despite all the advantages of minimal-access surgery, are still getting open surgery, because so few surgeons have the skills," said Mark Slack, head of gynaecology at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, and co-founder of CMR Surgical, the company behind Versius.

Robotic surgery sounds like the ultimate in safe, efficient and effective 21st-century health care. Instead of a surgeon's potentially fallible human hand, you have a robot with its precision-built mechanical arms able to perform micro-accurate procedures on tissues deep within the body. With robot-assisted surgery, the surgeon sits at a nearby console with a 3D view of the surgical site. If the surgeon's hand develops a tremor, the computer system knows to ignore it. The technology also means surgeons can use finer instruments that cause less damage to the body. In turn, this should reduce blood loss and the need for blood transfusions - and mean that patients recover more quickly.