Advantages and Disadvantages of Robotic Technology in Urology – Dr. Shaw Zhou

Shaw Zhou, MD of St Petersburg, FL

My name is Shaw Zhou, I am with Advanced Urology Institute.

Robotic surgery is truly precise, for example, the magnify [goes] up to ten times so the doctor can see better and if your doctor has a hand tremor [it’s still] very steady. You got four arms instead of two arms, so you have two arms to grab for you and so on and so forth. And you have three dimensional [view], you can see much better. The traditional labs got surgical screens which are two dimensional so you don’t have that sense of depth. However the drawback is first of all, the doctor sits 10 feet away, so God forbid if something happened, your doctor will have to go in, wash your hands and you are not by your patient

Also you lose the tactile sensation, cause you don’t feel it no more. When you tie a knot or whatever you know, the tactile sensor feed gives how much force you use now, [before] it’s purely by experience. Although the new robot that we’re talking about that has tactile sensationin other words you can visually see it. They see how much force [is needed] if its red or green. So it’s getting better and better, eventually new robots keep on coming out but in the future I think we can overcome all these shortcomings for robot surgery.