Since 2001, robotic tools have caused great changes in the practice of surgery. They have greatly reduced the stress and physical demands normally placed on surgeons and have made certain procedures possible.

One example is “keyhole surgery”, or minimally invasive (微创) surgery, which normally requires surgeons to stand at awkward angles and make difficult movements with their hands to make a cut inside the patient. But in June 2022, surgeon James Ansell used 3D glasses and two joysticks(操纵杆) to control four robotic arms to perform a procedure to remove a cancerous tumor (肿瘤). “My colleague said… that this feels like cheating,” Ansell said to The Guardian.

Another area of surgery that has had major technological breakthroughs in recent years is telesurgery. Telesurgery, or remote surgery, is the use of technology that allows a surgeon to perform a procedure on a patient not in the same physical location.

Normally, telesurgery relies on a wired connection due to concerns of harming the patient if a wireless connection should drop during surgery, but China made several advancements in wireless telesurgery based on 5G technology.

China achieved the first 5G-based remote operation in March 2019 involving a brain surgery procedure between a surgeon in Sanya and a patient in Beijing, a distance totaling nearly 3,000 kilometers, reported CGTN. More recently, a team of surgeons at the Hainan Eye Hospital successfully completed remote micron–level eye surgery via a 5G robot on rabbits located at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, reported China Daily.

Some people even believe that robotic systems, combined with AI, could one day surpass(超过)human surgeons. But given current technological limitations and the high costs of these robots, the complete robot takeover of surgery may still be a while off.

After COVID-19, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that while the number of nurses has increased in the past three years, the U.S. still experiences a shortage of registered nurses, and that there will be over one million unfilled nursing jobs. So what’s the solution? Robots.

Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend (趋势). Toyohashi University of Technology has developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can deliver medicines and other items.

Robots can serve as a mediator (中介) for human communication. Telepresence robots such as Vgo, and Giraff can be controlled through a computer, smartphone, or tablet, allowing family members or doctors to remotely check patients. If you can’t get to the nursing home to visit grandma, you can use a telepresence robot to hang out with her.

A robot’s appearance affects its ability to successfully interact (互动) with humans, which is why the Human-Interactive Robot Research decided to develop a robotic nurse that looks like a huge teddy bear. RIBA, also known as “Robear,” can help patients into and out of wheelchairs and beds with its strong arms.

On the less cute and more scary side there is Android F, which has such natural skin and hair color that some patients may not know the difference. This conversational robot companion has cameras in its eyes, which allow it to track patients and use proper facial expressions and body language in its interactions.

It’s important to notice that robotic nurses don’t decide courses of treatment or make diagnoses (诊断). Instead, they perform routine and hard tasks, freeing nurses up to look after patients with immediate needs. This is one industry where it seems the integration of robots will lead to cooperation, not replacement.

In the future, chances are we don’t need to depend on human donations for life-saving skin grafts (移植).

That’s the goal of Xeno Therapeutics, a biotech non-profit organization. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the group’s initial application for temporary skin grafts removed from genetically modified (基因改良) pigs. This means that they can start testing pig skin grafts on people who have experienced severe burns.

Skin, the body’s largest organ, plays an important role in blocking pathogens (病原体) from reaching our organs inside. It also helps the body keep a constant temperature. People with severe skin damage are at a high risk of developing deadly infections as a result of changes in temperature.

At the moment, the only skin grafts available in the US come from the dead people who have agreed to be organ donors, or patients who have gone through surgery to remove skin after large weight loss. These human skins used for grafts are not easy to find.

Xeno Therapeutics, which gets its name from animal-to-human transplants, has raised pigs that have skin remarkably similar to our own. Grafts from these pigs are therefore more likely to hide without being detected by the host's immune system — at least temporarily. The idea is that they could be used for immediate burn treatment, followed human skin graft treatment later.

“I’d say that just like comparing a Coke with Pepsi, it would be hard to tell which was the human skin and which was the pig graft,” said Xeno Therapeutics CEO Paul Holzer.

The non-profit organization has been working to conduct the clinical trials, which will only be testing the grafts’ safety and tolerability in six patients with severe burns. Assuming the results are positive after a month, the grafts will need to pass through two more stages of testing before they can be approved for widespread clinical use.

Several other groups around the world are working to make animal organs suitable for clinical medicine. In Brazil, researchers are exploring using tilapia skin as temporary bandages for burn victims whose skin is regrowing.