By ODDO BHF AM
In this new monthly Fund Insight, we want to show how artificial intelligence is serving the integrity of the human body through the advent of robotic surgery.
THE LIMITS OF CLASSICAL SURGERY...
Surgical acts require precision and experience but their quality can be endangered by the physical fatigue of the surgeon, in particular by a loss of motor capacities under the effect of the repetition of the acts and the muscular tensions it produces.
There are no official statistics on surgical errors, but several estimates are circulating: a) 450,000 errors per year in France (of which 60,000 result in death), i.e. 1% of surgical procedures; b) in the United States, surgical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the country.
In the same way as many other criteria, don't we judge the level of civilization of a society by its capacity to operate a surgery almost without risk? Wouldn't this be a fieldwhere artificial intelligence could come to the rescue of man in order to preserve what is most precious to him: his physical integrity?
...CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR THE ADVENT OF ROBOTIC SURGERY
The first surgical robots, mainly the DaVinci from the company " Intuitive Surgical " appeared in the 2000s. Their value proposition is based on the following points: a) the precision of these robots is superior to that of human surgeons; b) the integrity of the human body is preserved as these robots enshrine the advent of minimally invasive surgery; c) they carry the promise of a significant reduction in the number of surgical errors in hospitals; d) they allow for earlier detection of certain pathologies, which in turn guarantees an increase in the chances of recovery.
The 6730 DaVinci robots installed in hospitals around the world performed about 1.6 million procedures in 2021. The spectrum of interventions is very broad: general surgery (hernias, colorectal surgery, cholecystectomy, bariatric surgery), urological surgery, gynaecological surgery, cardiac surgery, head and neck surgery. These robots are not yet autonomous. The surgeon is still behind the computer console, but in the next few years the robot's skills will be enhanced and the surgeon's rolewill be reduced.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS DERIVATIVES ARE AT THE HEART OF THE ROBOTIC SURGERY MATRIX
The manufacturers of these surgical robots have understood the need to integrate machine and deep learning algorithms to create self-learning robots that feed on data from human surgical practice. Using this data, algorithms will determine standardized procedures for millions of cases, achieving a level of accuracy far superior to that of a human surgeon, with the obvious advantage of consistency in operating procedure.
Artificial intelligence is also used in conjunction with one of its derivatives (machine vision) to analyze medical imaging and detect cancerous cases. The ablation of an organ by this surgical robot will thus be associated with laparoscopic video (video of the abdomen), the analysis of which can provide practitioners with crucial information during and after the operation.
As early as 2019, the US health authority (FDA) approved Intuitive Surgical 's Iris augmented reality solution for use in kidney surgery. Since then, 3D representations of the kidney resulting from machine learning analysis of X-rays allow practitioners to operate in optimal conditions.
