The use of robot-assisted surgery (robotic surgery) has surged in recent years as the healthcare sector is heavily pouring capital in automation. Robotics has become the most vital breakthroughs of this decade, utilizing across all industries including automotive, warehousing, logistics, supply chain management, travel and hospitality. In healthcare, it is playing a crucial role, enabling a surgeon to perform a surgical process by remotely operating robotic surgical equipment.

Since the initial steps in the late 1980s, various numbers and varieties of devices used in clinical settings. And now robots are deployed for a wide array of surgical applications around the human body.

Need for Surgical Robots

There is no uncertainty that healthcare has shifted beyond the traditional systems of treatment. The evolution of new-age technologies has led the sector to personalized medicines and tech-driven care. Robotic surgery is one such technology-enabled care, offering a high level of precision.

Considering industry reports, the first documented use of a robot-assisted surgical procedure befell in 1985 when the PUMA 560 robotic surgical arm was practiced in a delicate neurosurgical biopsy, a non-laparoscopic surgery. In 1990, the AESOP system built by Computer Motion became the first system approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its endoscopic surgical procedure.

And in 2000, the da Vinci Surgery System came into the existence, becoming the first robotic surgery system approved by the FDA for general laparoscopic surgery. Robot-assisted surgery is an advancement in the minimally invasive surgical methods with augmented vision through ten times extravagant view and improved precision control with wristed instruments and better ergonomics for the surgeon.

As per the market report, the global market of surgical robots is anticipated to reach from US$3.9 billion in 2018 to US$6.5 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 10.4 percent.

How Robotic Surgery Helps the Current Healthcare System?

Robot-assisted surgery allows doctors or surgeons to perform several sorts of intricate procedures with more precision, flexibility and control. It provides better accessibility and ability than conventional methods of surgical procedures. Robotic surgery is typically associated with minimally invasive surgery, where procedures performed through tiny incisions.

By making use of surgical robots, surgeons can find it enhances precision, flexibility and control during the operation, enabling them to better see the site. It provides a range of advantages to both patients and doctors, including for patients – minimally invasive, faster recovery, less pain and less blood loss, and lower the chance of infection; for doctors – better performance, more confidence, wider use, and less stress.

Recent Growth in Robotic Surgery

As robotic surgery is at the cutting edge of precision and miniaturization in the realm of surgery, the procedure saw an exaggerate increase by 8.4-fold between 2012 and 2018. A recently published study by JAMA Network Open, a monthly open-access medical journal from the American Medical Association, found that hospitals that launch robotic surgery programs have a broad and direct increase in the use of robotic surgery, followed by a decrease in traditional laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery.

To evaluate the trends in the use of robotic surgery for common procedures, researchers found that the use of robotic surgery increased 8.4-fold, from 1.8 percent in 2012 to 15.1 percent in 2018, with the scale even greater for some procedures, including inguinal hernia repair, 0.7 to 28.8 percent.

So, the use of robot-assisted surgery will continue to rise around the world, alleviating fatigue while aiding procedures requiring great precision.