Hansen Medical, a developer of robotic technology for precise control of catheter-based technologies, declared that its Magellan Robotic System has been used by surgeons at St. Mary's Hospital in London, UK to treat a patient suffering from abdominal aortic aneurysm. The hospital is a division of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
Professor Nick Cheshire, head of circulation and renal sciences and consultant vascular surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare., informed that with the help of the advanced robotic technology, more number of patients suffering from complex disease may now be operated. St. Mary's Hospital has worked closely with Hansen Medical to develop this robotic technology, and will leverage this technology to devise novel procedures in order to bring the best and latest treatments to the patients.
Cheshire informed that for this particular procedure, the surgeons utilized the Magellan Robotic System to pass a stent via the endograft and into the renal artery. The technique is to enter into the blood vessel via the stent, and then exit via the uniquely formed window into the kidney vessel. Manual technique was used on the right side of the patient which took 1 h and 20 min, and robotic technique used on the left side took just 20 min.
A workstation outside the operating room controls the robotic system, which shows the patient's blood vessels on a screen and enables the clinician to steer through the blood vessels with a bendable robotic catheter. The clinician can navigate the catheter and place its moveable joints and tip to access the peripheral anatomy of the patient.
In conventional procedures, surgeons generally use their hands to insert the catheter into the patient's body. On the other hand, the robotic technique improves technical precision and control, and reduces the danger of damage occurring to the walls of the blood vessels.
Endovascular robotic procedure requires a tiny incision in the groin and cause only minimal blood loss. It results in shorter hospital stay and takes a standard recovery time of five days when compared to open surgery, which requires 10 days or more.
Hansen Medical displayed the Magellan Robotic System at the Leipzig Interventional Course, which was held from January 25th to 28th at the Trade Fair Leipzig, Germany.