Minimally invasive surgical techniques are continually being developed to reduce the invasiveness of various surgical procedures. Laparoscopic surgery and other minimally invasive surgeries successfully reduce patients’ postoperative pain, complications and hospitalization time. As a new surgical technique, Igarashi et al have been developing a surgical technique under an isotonic water-filled environment, called WaFLES (Water-Filled Laparo-Endoscopic Surgery). WaFLES has two disadvantages; one is difficulties in managing floating organs and the other is interruption of vision by blood. In our research, we focused on the managing floating organs. This surgery is carried out in an abdominal workspace which is filled with isotonic water. Surgical targets and some organs around the target are continually floating during the surgery. Therefore the floating becomes difficult for surgeon to provide stable creation of a surgical workspace during surgery. It is also requires to develop an assisted system for the creation of a surgical workspace. To assist a creation of surgical workspace and to manage the floating organs, we proposed sheath-shaped robotic manipulator to create a surgical workspace like a retracting tool and a forceps manipulator which can be set through the sheath. In this presentation, we show our proposals of surgical workspace creation system and a prototype device of the robotic manipulator.
Left: Proposed device overview.
Right: Creating mechanism of surgical workspace.