Procedures to treat eye conditions such as retinal disease often involve surgeons working on a layer of cells less than a millimetre thick. On top of this, surgeons must account for patients’ breathing, snoring, and eye movements, along with their own involuntary hand tremors.
Acknowledging these specific challenges, researchers at the University of Utah collaborated to create a new robotic surgery device that aims to give surgeons ‘superhuman’ hands. Mounted directly to the patient’s head using a helmet, the robot is extremely precise, executing movements as small as one micrometre. It uses a haptic interface to scale down the surgeon’s movements for the tiny operational site within the eye, while also compensating for hand tremors.
“Treatments for vision disorders are rapidly advancing,” said Jake Abbot, a professor in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “We need to give surgeons better ability to keep up with them.”
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The work was led by Abbot and Moran Eye Center retinal specialist Paul S Bernstein. Published in the journal Science Robotics, the study outlines how the head-mounted device was tested using enucleated pig eyes. A human volunteer fitted with special goggles that allowed the animal eye to be mounted just in front of their natural eye. This allowed the researchers to test the robot’s ability to compensate for head motion and correct for hand tremors, all while operating on animal tissue, at no risk to the volunteer.
In the experiments described in the study, the surgeons achieved higher success rates while using the surgical robot device to perform subretinal injections while also avoiding ophthalmic complications.
“The unique feature of this robot, head mounting, may make it possible for patients to have subretinal injections under intravenous (IV) sedation, rather than general anesthesia,” said co-author Eileen Hwang, a Moran Eye Center retinal surgeon.
“IV sedation allows for faster recovery and is safer in some patients. Robots may also allow for more precise delivery of gene therapy medication compared to manual injections for more reproducible, safer treatments.”
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