US Surgeons Successfully Perform Robotic Surgery on Artificial Tissue in Switzerland

An image depicting a medical team performing remote healthcare using a robot. Getty Images Bank

A medical team from the Mayo Clinic in the U.S., one of the world’s leading hospitals, has successfully performed a thrombectomy demonstration on an artificial tissue model located in Zurich, Switzerland. The procedure utilized a newly developed ‘robotic magnetic navigation (RMN)’ system. The success of this transcontinental surgery, a field where response time is critical, has raised expectations for precise and rapid remote robotic surgery technology. The research findings were published on February 29 (local time) in the international academic journal ‘Science Robotics’.

The artificial tissue model on which the Mayo Clinic team performed the thrombectomy is made from synthetic materials to mimic biological tissue. It is used for practicing difficult surgeries or for simulations.

“In the United States, 113 million people live more than an hour’s drive from a thrombectomy-capable stroke center,” explained Bradley Nelson, the study’s lead researcher from ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). “This case, where a medical team from an institution thousands of miles away successfully performed a remote thrombectomy, presents a new possibility for enhancing patients’ access to treatment.”

Robotic magnetic navigation is a technology that projects a magnetic field onto the human body to apply force to medical devices such as catheters and endoscopes. It allows force to be applied to the device without any direct physical connection.

The RMN robot operates by using a magnetic field to move a catheter inserted into a blood vessel during surgery. It uses the ‘pulling force’ of magnetism to control the catheter inside the vessel from the outside. The research team operated the RMN robot using a system that is both precise and quick to execute transmitted commands, successfully removing the blood clot.

This technology was previously used for centuries to remove metal debris from the eyes of factory workers. For the past two decades, research has been actively pursued to use it for delivering therapeutic agents to precise locations within the body.

The medical field began to focus on magnetic fields in the early 1980s with the discovery of neodymium, a rare-earth alloy. Neodymium can be used to create permanent magnets that retain a strong magnetized state for a long time. This led to the widespread use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in medical settings and the development of treatment technologies that can project high-intensity magnetic fields onto the human body without causing discomfort to the patient. ‘Minimally invasive procedures,’ which aim to reduce tissue trauma as much as possible, also advanced with the full-scale application of magnetic fields.

When combined with precision manufacturing technology, magnetic fields are being usefully applied in the development of medical robots. Scientists began developing high-precision devices capable of performing complex movements using the electromagnetic navigation system (eMNS). Previously, U.S. medical device companies such as Stereotaxis, Ion Scientific, and Levita have successfully used RMN robots for cardiac ablation and minimally invasive abdominal surgeries.

RMN robots are expected to be particularly advantageous when using endoscopes. While surgeons have often had to push, pull, and twist an endoscope while observing the inside of a patient’s body, RMN could eliminate this effort.