Dr. Sudhir Srivastava, founder and CEO of SS Improvements, performing a robotic telesurgery for atrial septal defect (ASD) closure. | Supply: SS Improvements Worldwide
World wide, individuals dwelling in rural areas wrestle to entry satisfactory healthcare. In line with the Facilities for Illness Management, rural residents within the U.S. face increased dangers of loss of life due, partially, to restricted entry to specialised medical care and emergency companies. SS Improvements Worldwide Inc. hopes to alter that with robotic telesurgery.
The Gurugram, India-based firm has accomplished 5 robotic cardiac telesurgeries, of accelerating complexity, throughout greater than 250 km (155 mi.). These procedures are simply an early step in its objective to democratize entry to cutting-edge healthcare, Dr. Vishwa Srivastava, chief working officer of SS Improvements, informed The Robotic Report.
“Our entire concept was that expertise is nice, but it surely doesn’t imply something till individuals have entry to it,” he stated. “One in all our mantras within the firm is that we wished to make the most of expertise to the most effective of our capacity, in order that extra sufferers, and extra individuals internationally, will be capable to profit from such an exquisite expertise.”
The corporate’s newest system, the SSI Mantra 3, prices only a third of Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system, Srivastava stated. Launched in July 2024, SSI Mantra 3 obtained regulatory approval for distant surgical procedure and teleproctoring from the Central Medicine Commonplace Management Group (CDSCO), opening the door for distant surgical procedures and medical schooling.
The system has an open-faced ergonomic Surgeon Command Centre, a 32-in. 3D 4K monitor, and a 23-in. 2D touch-panel monitor to show all patient-related data. It additionally gives a digital real-time picture of the robotic Affected person Aspect Arm Carts and might superimpose 3D fashions of diagnostic imaging.
SS Improvements extends from easy surgical procedures to advanced cardiac procedures
The SSi Mantra 3 contains greater than 40 various kinds of robotic devices that can be utilized for various specialties together with cardiac surgical procedure. | Supply: SS Improvements Worldwide
Srivastava and his father, founder and CEO Dr. Sudhir Srivastava, are each surgeons who received their coaching within the U.S. and Canada. When Sudhir Srivastava began the corporate, it was essential to him that the corporate was on par with all regulatory and world-class methods of approaching medical trials, irrespective of the place it carried out surgical procedures. So, the workforce began small.
“We first carried out on inanimate objects, then we did an animal trial,” Srivastava stated. “Then we did a easy cholecystectomy, which is a elimination of the gallbladder, at like 5 km [3.1 mi.] away.”
After this, the workforce labored with Dr. Sudhir Rawal, the medical director and chief of genito-uro oncology on the Rajiv Gandhi Most cancers Institute and Analysis Heart. Rawal carried out a number of circumstances of more and more advanced most cancers surgical procedures at a distance of 40 km (24.8 mi.). These procedures included a prostatectomy (elimination of the prostate), cystectomy (elimination of the bladder), nephrectomy (elimination of the kidneys), tumor excisions, and extra.
“We’ve gone by each step to step by step improve the complexity, holding in thoughts security and efficacy and with out inflicting any hurt to the affected person,” Srivastava stated.
The workforce continued to extend the gap and complexity of those telesurgeries till it lastly determined to tackle cardiac surgical procedures. For instance, it carried out a robotic beating coronary heart completely endoscopic coronary artery bypass (TECAB), one of the advanced cardiac surgical procedures.
To carry out its surgical procedures, the corporate partnered with the most important telecom firm in India, Airtel, to safe devoted fiber optic traces. Srivastava stated though it leased 100 megabytes per second by the road, its bandwidth requirement for the surgical procedures was simply 25 to 30 megabytes per second.
Sooner or later, SS Improvements stated it hopes to maintain pushing the boundaries. It plans to carry out telesurgeries in France and Indonesia within the coming months to check its transcontinental talents.
Robotic telesurgery gives a brand new coaching methodology
SS Improvements stated its system gives larger visualization than different surgical robotic programs, which generally depend on 2D imaginative and prescient. This makes surgical procedure simpler for all surgeons, whether or not they’re new or have years of expertise.
“Since day considered one of our inception, we now have given 3D imaginative and prescient to the whole surgical workforce. So what meaning is surgical efficiency is just not compromised. If I’m working in 3D, I can see the whole lot that I might see in an open situation,” Srivastava stated. “However, if I’m working in 2D, which is what robotic surgical corporations aside from us do, it’s like overlaying one eye and anticipating myself to function.”
Robotic telesurgery doesn’t simply have the potential to deliver world-class surgeons to rural areas; it will also be used to higher prepare younger surgeons, Srivastava added.
“Using teleprompter, even at distant distances, we are able to coach and prepare the youthful era of surgeons,” he stated. “And in the event that they get caught, then we are able to take over and get them by that step in order that they don’t have to surrender and convert the surgical procedure to an open process or a laparoscopic process.”
“We’re not taking a look at telesurgery as some rock star surgeon sitting in a single place taking the sufferers away from all different up-and-coming surgeons,” he continued. “You may need heard this quote {that a} rising tide lifts all ships. We wished to make the most of telesurgery to have the ability to carry and carry others by offering them the assist that they may want.”
