NovoSurge develops robotic sternum cracker: When performing open heart surgery, there’s this pesky thing called the sternum between doctors and their pulsating target. The tried-and-true solution to this conundrum is to saw that baby open, which is brutal if you’re watching, and incredibly fun if you’re performing the task. Once finished with the cardiac procedure, the two halves of the chest the surgeon has created are tied back together with either wires or cables, which is a relatively secure but not a perfect fixation.There are a couple of issues that this practice poses. One is post-operative pain, as any movement or cough causes the two flat bony surface to rub back and forth despite the wire fixation. Another is the risk of a sternal wound infection, which can lead to the dreaded mediastinitim — a truly a horrendous complication that requires the removal of the sternum itself.
To address these issues, NovoSurge developed their robotic Structured Sternotomy System. The system uses x-rays and ultrasounds of the chest to automatically design a sinusoidally shaped incision path, according to the company. The curved shape, as opposed to the straight line currently favored by cardiothoracic surgeons, theoretically provides more stability once the sternotomy is repaired, hopefully leading to less of the problems listed above. Once the template is set, a robotic ultrasonic blade controlled remotely by the surgeon makes the incision. The use of an ultrasonic blade as opposed to a saw is meant to decrease the localized soft tissue damage, which is purported to lead to quicker healing by the manufacturer. 
Children’s Hosptical Boston microrobot puts da Vinci to shame: Children’s Hospital Boston is no ordinary hospital. They actually develop new therapies, engineer medical devices, and organize projects to propel the science of medicine. While at TEDMED, Children’s was showing off a tiny vascular surgery robot they’ve been working on that puts the size of da Vinci robot’s tools to shame. Watch a video of the new device.
Robotic delivery of radioactive seeds to prostate tumors: At Thomas Jefferson University Hospital a clinical trial is about to begin evaluating the performance of a robot designed to help urologists and radiation oncologists precisely place radioactive seeds into prostate tumor targets. Because brachytherapy seeds have to be individually inserted, human error becomes a significant problem, something a robot may soon prove to overcome on 14 subjects in the trial. The robot, called Euclidean, was designed in-house at Jefferson, and it sports 16 degrees of freedom (DOFs): 9 DOFs for positioning module and 7 DOFs for surgery module. Medgadget has contacted Jefferson radiation oncology investigators, and they kindly provided our readers with these images of the Euclidean robot.
HealthMap’s John Brownstein: MedGadget has written before about HealthMap, a project spearheaded by folks from Harvard, Children’s Hospital Boston and a few other institutions. Last week at TEDMED the blog’s contributors had a chance to interview project co-founder John Brownstein about what HealthMap is up to these days.
A weekly roundup of new developments in medical technology, by MedGadget.com.
