STAR operates laparoscopically
On 26 January 2022 Axel Krieger's group at Johns Hopkins University published in Science Robotics the results of laparoscopic operations in which the robot STAR sutured the small intestine of four living pigs by itself. The surgeon chose and approved one of the suturing plans the robot had drawn up, and the robot placed the stitches. The animals were followed for a week after surgery.
Why it matters
Unlike 2016, the operation went through small incisions rather than an opened abdomen, the conditions in which ordinary surgical robots work. This is an editorial assessment. The robot drew up the plan options itself and asked the surgeon again when the tissue shifted too far, so the person's part moved from steering motions to choosing and approving decisions.
The figures below come from the authors' manuscript of the article in PubMed Central. Live animals. STAR operated on four pigs, and a surgeon operated on a fifth as a control with standard laparoscopic tools. STAR's operations took 55.6 to 67 minutes, the control 25.6 minutes. STAR placed 83.05 % of its stitches correctly at the first attempt, and the rest needed a correction; the authors write that more than 83 % of the suturing task was done autonomously. A bowel phantom. STAR (5 operations) was compared with manual laparoscopy (4) and with a surgeon-controlled da Vinci Si robot (4). STAR was better than both in consistency and accuracy, and the result was repeated on the live animals. What stayed with people. The surgeon exposed the tissue edges and chose and approved the plan, and an assistant cleared loose suture. On the live animals the operator also fine-tuned the robot's position by hand before the first stitch and approved each firing of the needle. When a stitch was missed, the robot was adjusted by hand. The tissue was marked with near-infrared markers. What the record does not claim. The journal version was not read, behind a Cloudflare check. The Johns Hopkins release calls this the first autonomous laparoscopic surgery on a live animal; that is the institution's claim, and the record does not verify it.