One of the greatest advances in medical history was the
development of surgery. However, after more than 150 years, it is still a
wrenching and brutal process.
According
to Medical News Today, about 300,000 people have coronary artery bypass
surgery each year. It seems almost miraculous, for example, that someone on
death’s door from cardiovascular disease can be granted a new lease on life
through bypass surgery. On the other hand, that procedure comes at a
tremendous cost and often with serious side effects, such as pain and
diminished cognitive abilities.
That is why researchers have long dreamed of finding an
alternative to surgery. And one does appear to be on the horizon at last. It
was imagined in a 1966 science fiction film called Fantastic Voyage, in
which scientists were able to reduce doctors and submarines to microscopic size
so that they could be injected into the bloodstream and travel through the
body, fixing whatever was wrong.
Although none of today’s scientists envision shrinking their
colleagues, The Jerusalem Post1 announced recently that researchers at the
Judea and Samaria College in Ariel, Israel, and from the mechanical engineering
department of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have designed a robot
that can crawl through the bloodstream to treat conditions, such as tumors,
that are too difficult for conventional surgery
The
robot, called ViRob, is powered by a harmless external magnetic field and has
the ability to crawl upstream against the flow of blood. In principle,
numerous such robots could be injected into the body simultaneously to treat
widely invasive forms of cancer. The researchers say that the robot could
remain in the body indefinitely to carry out medical procedures as needed.
For
example, ViRob can clean the plaque from blood vessels in patients suffering
from cardiovascular disease. It can also cut off samples of tissue for
biopsies. It can be fitted with a camera so that the inside of the body can be
viewed in real time. And, because the ViRob makes deep incisions unnecessary,
it reduces recovery time for the patient.
The
robot is equipped with tiny arms that allow it to grab onto the walls of...
