A 13-year-old girl has been operated on with the assistance of a robot for the first time in Belgium, revealed Saint-Luc University Clinics in a press release on Monday. The mitral valve repair undertaken in May was a success, and the patient is doing well. This is the first time a paediatric heart operation has been robot-assisted in Belgium although there have been hundreds of such robot-assisted interventions to repair faulty mitral valves on adults at the Saint-Luc Clinics in the past 3 years.
Using the robot nicknamed “Da Vinci” makes the surgery minimally invasive. “The surgical intervention is reduced. We see less blood loss and post-operative infection, recovery is improved, and no alien material is introduced into the body,” explains the press release from the University Clinics A console with very detailed 3D visualisation of the surgical field enables the surgeon to guide the robot, each and every one of the surgeons movements being reproduced by the robot's 4 arms.
(Source: Belga)
