Level 2: Intermediate

FOR the first time, a robot has performed eye surgery on people. The successful trial suggests
that robots will soon be performing operations that are too delicate for a human to do manually.

In the study, each of 12 participants needed to have a membrane removed from their retina. This
involves cutting out a collection of cells that have clumped together, distorting the person’s
Vision. Half of the participants had the operation done by a robot made by Preceye, a firm based
in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

It has a movable arm directed using a joystick-style controller that filters out the imperceptible
tremors from the surgeons hand, and can be fitted with various surgical Instruments.Both the
robotic and manual operations succeeded, but those who had the robot surgery appeared to
experience less damage to blood vessels at the back of the eye overall. Hovvever, the study was
too small to rule out the possibility that this was a statistical fluke.