Endolumenal robotics moves ahead with Endoquest and Virtuoso Surgical
- Steve Bell
- May 20
- 9 min read
Much of the future of surgical robotics of course is in the laparoscopic and thorascopic fields. With system like Intuitive DV5, Medtronic Hugo RAS, Johnson & Johnson Ottava and the host of other credible systems out on the market, or in development.
But a parallel field that will change the rules on “when and how” surgery is done has taken big steps ahead this week.
Endolumenal surgery has been screaming for robotics since 2007 - I know we tried this without robots at MINOS medical . But only now has technology, robotics, regulatory, software all come together to give us the tantalising taste of this new type of surgery.
Okay - let me be clear here. Endolumenal robots for diagnostics and minimal see n treat have been with us for a while with systems in the bronchial space like Intuitive’s ION, JNJs Monarch, and Noah’s Galaxy.
But last week we saw the first big advances clinically of surgical endolumenal robotics. Or robots with arms and end effectors to start to do genuine surgical manoeuvres from within the lumen of the patient.
This is a game changer as we went from open surgery (big incisions) to Minimal Access Surgery (lots of small incisions) to Single incision surgery (one relatively small incision.) But Natural orifice surgery (rather deeper than just TORS or transanal) means you eliminate incisions all together, and use natural access points to get deep into the patient.
This week we saw two very different, and equally exciting, First in Human experiences with two novel endolumenal surgical robotics systems.
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