June 5, surging news reporter from the Shanghai jiaotong university school of medicine affiliated with the ninth people's hospital (hereinafter referred to as the nine hospitals) was informed that the hospital's rehabilitation surgical reconstruction of microsurgery center director professor Zhang Yixin led the joint multidisciplinary experts of the hospital and a domestic surgical robot enterprise, recently took the lead in the development of the country's first microsurgical robot clinical research.
In recent years, with the advancement of minimally invasive surgery and high-precision operation technology, surgical robots have been widely used in the field of surgery. As a difficult branch of repair and reconstruction surgery, microsurgery, especially in the sub-millimeter vascular anastomosis operation, puts forward extremely high requirements on operation precision and stability, which has become an important challenge for the expansion of the application of robotic surgical systems. The research and development and clinical transformation of microsurgical robots are promoting the transformation of "traditional manual operation" to "precision collaborative system", which is an important technical direction for future repair and reconstruction surgery.
On May 27th, the team from the above mentioned nine hospitals successfully performed the first domestic robotic perforator flap vascular anastomosis in China. The patient was a 29-year-old woman who was previously diagnosed with a bulging dermatofibrosarcoma of the left elbow with a wide range of lesions.
The operation was first completed by Professor Hao Yongqiang's team from the Department of Orthopaedics of the Nine Hospitals to perform radical resection of the tumor, and then by the team from the Department of Reconstructive Surgery under the guidance of Zhang Yixin, with Dr. Feng Shaoqing as the chief surgeon, to complete the free transplantation of an ALT flap from the patient's right thigh, and the use of the independently developed "micro-robotic system" (hereinafter referred to as the Kai system) to perform vascular anastomosis for the tumor. Using the self-developed "micro-robotic system" (hereinafter referred to as Kai system), the patient was able to accurately anastomose the arterial and venous vessels of the perforating branch with a diameter of only 0.5 to 1.2 mm. After the operation, the patient recovered smoothly, and the operation also verified the reliability and safety of the system in complex reconstructive surgery.
The hospital revealed that this is the first time that domestic micro-robot used Kai system to complete the 0.5mm level of ultra-microvascular stabilization suture, the micro-robot has the ability to replace human hands in the key anastomosis link, which has reached the international advanced level. During the operation, Kai system realized real-time tension control, motion trajectory recording, operation time collection and other multi-parameter automated collection of the surgical anastomosis process for the first time, providing systematic data support for AI training, surgical evaluation and teaching simulation.
According to Prof. Zhang Yixin, "The introduction of microrobotics significantly improves the precision and stability of sub-millimeter vascular anastomosis operations, making the safety, standardization, and reproducibility of complex reconstructive surgeries dramatically improved. In the future, with the development of related algorithms and the improvement of the data system, the technology is expected to play a role in more scenarios such as surgical automation, telemedicine, etc., and bring about a profound change in surgical treatment methods."