Sheffield Teaching Hospitals use advanced robot for complex brain surgery
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation has become the UK’s first NHS hospital to use a cutting-edge robot to help improve complex brain surgery.
The ROSA surgical assistant robot assists neurosurgeons perform complicated brain surgery with greater precision, making surgery quicker and less invasive.
The system is particularly beneficial for patients with poorly controlled epilepsy, deep-seated brain tumours, Parkinson’s Disease and other complex brain disorders. Patients with these disorders stand to benefit from improved recovery times and better surgical outcomes.
Through ROSA, neurosurgeons can access accurate 3D maps of the brain, allowing them to precisely and safely reach areas they couldn’t reach before. Surgeons can then plan the best route for surgery, guiding the robot’s arm and instruments to the exact location of the seizure, tumour or biopsy.
The robot has been installed at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital’s neurological centre of excellence, and is being funded from the Sheffield charity Neurocare, with a cash opledge of £250,000.
Mr Dev Bhattacharyya, consultant neurosurgeon at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital who received special robotic neurosurgery training in France and the United States, said: “We are moving increasingly towards minimally invasive medical interventions. Robotics, GPS-like systems and error correction algorithms allow us to perform more complex procedures with less risk.
“Robotic surgery eliminates mechanistic errors and achieves sub-millimetre accuracy every time as well as taking a lot less time to perform the surgery. Previously UK patients would have had to travel privately to London or abroad to have robotic neurosurgery, so we are enormously grateful to Neurocare for bringing this first-class equipment to Sheffield and the NHS.
“As a neurological centre of excellence, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding care to patients needing complex brain surgery, so this state-of-the-art robot helper will enable us to further develop our expertise and further improve surgical outcomes for patients.”
By the end of the year it is hoped that the ROSA will also be used in Sheffield for complex spinal surgery, significantly reducing the risks and complications for patients with a range of degenerative spine diseases, trauma, deformities and spinal tumours.
Neurocare chair Beverley Webster said: “We are excited and very proud to be able to bring the first ROSA Robot to an NHS hospital in the UK. Because of its reputation as a neurological centre of excellence, Sheffield has attracted highly specialised neurosurgeons who, using this amazing technology, can change the lives of many more people. We now hope companies, organisations and individuals will support us and them by donating what they can to the ROSA Appeal.”