呼叫机器人医生：外科助理的兴起

Paging Dr. Robot: The rise of surgical assistants 03December 2025 Key takeaways •Robotic surgery is moving from novelty to necessity. Once a niche tool for select procedures, surgical robots now assist acrossmajor specialties, offering surgeons greater precision and patients faster recovery times. This shift is redefining what "standardof care" looks like in operating rooms worldwide. •However, it's important to note that while the technology is powerful, it is still evolving. Most surgical robots today operate atLevel 1 autonomy, requiring human oversight. Yet advances in AI, imaging, and connectivity hint at a future where robots couldplan, execute, and even perform remote surgeries, expanding access to care globally. •And growth is accelerating. With the market projected to more than double from $23 billion in 2025 to $52 billion by 2030,according to BofA Global Research, surgical robots are poised to redefine surgical standards worldwide. Surgical robots 101A surgical robot is exactly what it sounds like–a robot designed to assist surgeons, most commonly on minimally invasive procedures. These robots have arms capable of holding small medical instruments that a surgeon can maneuver via a controllerand a viewing screen. Currently, rather than replacing surgeons, these robots are leveraged by surgeons as a tool or assistant. Surgical robots are categorized based on how many access points (ports) they create on a patient’s body for a procedure. Multi-port versions use several small incisions (usually three to five ports) to accommodate robotic arms and tools. In contrast, single-port surgical robots consolidate all instruments through one, slightly larger, incision. They insert a flexible tube (called a cannula)into the patient’s body, to provide a singular access point for instruments, and then deploy multiple arms within this incision tocomplete the procedure. Surgical robots for different treatment areasSurgical robots are increasingly being adopted across five major and rapidly growing medical specialties, including: •Laparoscopic surgery:A type of minimally invasive surgery that uses a laparoscope (thin tube with camera) to lookinside a patient’s abdomen or pelvis. Surgical robots assist in a wide variety of these procedures, including thoracic/chestor general surgeries. •Orthopedics:Surgical robots assist during operations like joint replacements or spinal procedures. They offer improvedvisualization and minimize damage to healthy bone tissue.•Panvascular:Surgical robots can be designed to treat conditions affecting the vascular system, including the heart andbrain.•Natural orifice:These robots access internal organs through the body’s natural openings (e.g., mouth etc.) fordiagnostic or surgical purposes, commonly involving the lungs and stomach.•Percutaneous:This form of surgical robot is used for procedures that involve accessing and/or collecting internal bodytissue through small incisions in the skin. They are particularly useful for diagnostic biopsies in early-stage cancers (i.e.lung cancer) and for treatments like kidney stone removal. Advantages of surgical robots Enhances surgical precision and patient outcomesCompared with conventional minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery, robotic-assisted procedures significantly reduce surgical trauma (physical injury or damage to tissues and organs resulting from a surgical procedure) and accelerate a patient’s recoverypost-surgery. Traditional laparoscopy can be challenging for physicians, as they must manipulate instruments and endoscopes(cameras) through fixed incisions on the patient’s body. And because a surgeon’s hand movement and instrument tip directionhave an inverse relationship (i.e. when the doctor’s hand moves one way, the instrument tip moves the other)–oftentimesreferred to as the“chopstick effect”–manual control is unintuitive and technically demanding. Surgical robots can address this limitation, by aligning the surgeon’s hand movements with the instrument’s tip direction.Additionally, robotic platforms filter out hand tremors, enhancing the doctor’s precision and patient’s safety. These capabilitieshelp 1) reduce the patient’s possibility of unexpected bleeding during surgery, 2) lower complication rates, and 3) lead to shorterrecovery times. Optimizes surgical dexterityA surgical robot’s instruments typically offer four degrees of freedom–or types of movement: 1) rotation: ability to turn around its own axis; 2) pitch: up-and-down tilt, like nodding your head; 3) yaw: side-to-side movements, like shaking your head“no”; and4) grip: ability to open and close. Collectively, the four movements allow doctors to more accurately complete precise andcomplex tasks, like cutting, suturing, knotting, grasping, or clamping. The flexibility and control offered by these instrumentsgives them more advanced capabilities than both the human hand and traditional laparoscopic devices. Improves surgeon’s operating experienceFrom the