Michel Lefranc has not yet finished sewing up his patient and already knows that his intervention is a “success” And this woman, who was admitted in the morning, will be able to leave the hospital at the end of the day. A neurosurgeon at Amiens University Hospital, he has just carried out a somewhat special operation aimed at treating lower back pain. For three years, he has not used screws to treat this type of pain. Thanks to the robot, it will burn the small nerve endings of the joint (rhizolysis) and destroy its cartilage, allowing the fusion of bones (arthrodesis). Without Rosa, a robot developed in collaboration with engineer Bertin Nahum and his then-company Medtech, it would not have succeeded.
The Amiens surgeon planned the entire procedure down to the smallest detail thanks to the creation of the patient’s digital twin. Once in the operating room, the image and the patient become one. “All you have to do is teach the robot where it is in space and where the patient is, Michel Lefranc explains, as he attaches a tool to the end of the robot’s arm. Then the machine itself is exactly where I need to interfere, down to the millimeter. » The screens let him control everything.
Surgical robotics, this surgeon in his forties fell into during his internship in Amiens. Spine surgery, placement of implants in the brain of patients with Parkinson’s disease… he does 95% of his operations with Rosa.
At his hospital, he helped the Research and Study Group in Robotic Surgery (GRECO) to develop robotics. Brain implant, operation for severe and progressive scoliosis in a 6-year-old child, placement of a cochlear implant in a deaf patient… Greco teams are created by the University of Picardy jointly with Amiens University Hospital – Picardy. Nine world firsts have already been achieved between 2017 and 2022. In December 2022, a knee prosthesis was installed using the Mako robot from Smart Robotics Company.
Urologists have paved the way
Rosa, Mako, Hugo, da Vinci… Robots have revolutionized the practice of surgeons in just a few years. They occupy operating theatres. There was a lot of talk about it during the Congress organized by the National Academy of Surgery in early December 2023. But, make no mistake, it’s not the robots that operate, it’s the creation that manipulates them.
In this race for innovation, American company Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci robot, which looks like a giant octopus with articulated arms, has pioneered what is known as soft tissue surgery. In the 1980s, the Pentagon commissioned several organizations, including NASA, to find new surgical solutions for remote treatment of battlefield casualties. As a result of this research, da Vinci finally stepped into the operating room in the early 2000s. The objective was heart surgery, specifically coronary bypass grafts. But it is urologists who have taken advantage of this new tool for prostate or kidney cancer operations, because it allows them to reach anatomical areas that are difficult to reach. Not surprisingly: these same specialists were also among the first to adopt minimally invasive laparoscopic (or laparoscopic) surgery.
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