Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The first ro­bot-as­sist­ed surg­eries to be con­duct­ed in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean were done in T&T.

The first such surg­eries were done on Sep­tem­ber 20 at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH) with the as­sis­tance of the Free­hand Panora­ma CoBOT. 
The ro­bot is used to as­sist with la­paro­scop­ic surg­eries.

La­paro­scop­ic pro­ce­dures in­volve the in­ser­tion of nar­row tubes in­to the ab­domen through small in­ci­sions.

The sur­geon us­es these tools to ma­nip­u­late, cut and sew tis­sue. the sur­geon mon­i­tors and views the work through a cam­era which is al­so in­sert­ed in­to the body via an in­ci­sion and held by an as­sis­tant.

The ro­bot holds the cam­era in­stead of the as­sis­tant and is un­der the di­rect con­trol of the op­er­at­ing sur­geon.

The op­er­at­ing sur­geon com­mu­ni­cates with the ro­bot us­ing a se­ries of head ges­tures while wear­ing a head­piece and a con­troller by their foot.

This di­rects and an­gles the cam­era pre­cise­ly where the sur­geon needs it and holds it more steady than hu­man hands could. 
“By giv­ing us com­plete con­trol of our vi­sion we ac­tu­al­ly re­move that po­ten­tial for hu­man er­ror. It gives you a re­li­able and steady vi­sion be­cause this is now held by a ro­bot that obeys your every move,” Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Pro­fes­sor Shamir Cawich said at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. 
This, he said, trans­lat­ed to a safer pro­ce­dure for pa­tients. 
Cawich is among a team of six sur­geons who were the first to be trained to use the new tech­nol­o­gy.

Re­ferred to as the “Trinidad 6”, the team al­so con­sists of Pro­fes­sor Michael Ram­dass, Pro­fes­sor Dilip Dan, Dr Yardesh Singh, Dr Patrick Harnaryan and Dr Ravi Ma­haraj.

The team was the first in the world to be re­mote­ly trained in ro­bot­ic surgery. Over­all, four pa­tients have un­der­gone surgery us­ing the ro­bot lo­cal­ly. 
“We did a to­tal of four op­er­a­tions from as sim­ple as just a reg­u­lar elec­tive gall­blad­der re­moval to com­plex op­er­a­tions like re­mov­ing stones from the bile ducts,” Pro­fes­sor Cawich said.
“I’m hap­py to tell you all of these pa­tients are fan­tas­tic, they’re all well and their re­cov­ery was im­mac­u­late.”
Deputy Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at UWI Pro­fes­sor Dilip Dan said the tech­nol­o­gy’s in­tro­duc­tion is the coun­try’s first step to­ward ful­ly ro­bot­ic surg­eries.

How­ev­er, he ad­mits that even­tu­al­i­ty is still well in the fu­ture. He al­so not­ed that the mo­bil­i­ty of the ro­bot would al­low it to be used at any med­ical in­sti­tu­tion with­in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.
Stake­hold­ers in­volved in the jour­ney to date are A.A. Laquis, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the Min­istry of Health, the British High Com­mis­sion in T&T, Im­pe­r­i­al Med­ical So­lu­tions, Free­hand, and the UK De­part­ment of In­ter­na­tion­al Trade. 
While A.A. Laquis owns the ro­bot, group mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Cheryl Mo­hammed said it will be made avail­able for the treat­ment of pa­tients as well as fur­ther­ing med­ical ed­u­ca­tion. 

The UWI team at Mona, Ja­maica, led by Project Lead Pro­fes­sor Joseph Plum­mer, and Sur­gi­cal Lead Dr Roy Mc­Gre­gor, will now con­tin­ue on to Phase 2 of the project to ex­pand in­to more com­plex cas­es and fine tune tech­ni­cal is­sues iden­ti­fied by their T&T coun­ter­parts. Jami­a­ca is ex­pect­ed to con­duct its first ro­bot-as­sist­ed surgery by the month’s end.