Nanobots for Internal Surgery Essay

The use of nano-materials and extreme precision micro-engineering has the potential for great improvement in the world of electronics and information technology by providing smaller, faster, and more powerful computers and this has been at the forefront of the nanotechnology commercialization . Great examples of how nanotechnology is currently being used in these fields are products such as processors, data storage, and memory components made with nano-materials, TVs, monitors and even smartphone screens that use organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), and waterproof electronics such as smartphones due to the application of nano-coatings

Beginning from trephination which according to historians was the oldest operation performed even in prehistoric times to minimally invasive operations with use of technology that have now become the norm in modern era, the field of surgery has evolved by leaps and bounds. Various aspects of technology assisted surgery have been dealt with in this paper along with the different types of technologies in use like computer assisted and robotic surgeries. Traditional and modern methods have been compared and their pros and cons have been discussed in detail along with the application of technology in various surgical branches.

Research Theme: Building on the building blocks of life: Nanoscale materials for investigating biologically inspired and environmentally important systems.

The microfish were developed by a team of nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego. Smaller than the width of a human hair, these artificial microfish were so designed to perform complex tasks that traditional microrobots are incapable of meting out. By mimicking the biological structure of fish and miniaturizing it, they were able to incorporate propulsion, maneuvering and chemical sensing features into the bots.

Robotic Surgery is the use of robots in performing surgery. "Surgery is performed by manipulating straight instruments while viewing the instruments on a monitor. Robotic surgery is the evolution of laparoscopy that addresses the drawbacks of laparoscopy"(NJ urology).Considering the never ending improvement of technology, this type of surgery is being used more by a day worldwide and has a potential to totally take over the field of surgery. However, as robotic surgery has its advantages, it also has its disadvantages.

Many people are very familiar, and relatively comfortable with term “surgery”, but that has not always been the case. Surgery used to be associated with the fear of immense pain, and also the high probability of dying. The first ideas of cutting open someone for relief of an ailment, was first brought about during the Neolithic Period (10,200- 2,000 BCE) in Egypt. the Egyptians used a tool called the Trephine to drill into a persons brain. “Egyptians practised trephining in an effort to cure migraines - the idea was to ‘let out’ the illness that was causing the headaches” (Surgery). Many people died after having this procedure done. The few that did have it done lived happily, and some even had the procedure done multiple times. Hundreds of years later many new surgical devices came out that increased the amount of surgeries done, and the better they worked. One tool was a

Technology is advancing each and everyday. In the medical field and especially in the field of surgery, the most popular topic is robotic surgery. Robotic surgery is a novel and an exhilarating advancement in the medical field. Currently, surgical robots mainly have a promotional role rather than a practical role. However, robots are being used in many small surgeries and the extent of robots in the medical world is still evolving (Lanfranco, Castellanos, Desai, & Meyers, 2004). To genuinely understand this futuristic technology, the advantages, the disadvantages, the current and the

Nanoparticles are materials with overall dimensions less then one hundred nanometers, they are also known as zero-dimensional materials. These particles differ from other nanomaterials because all their dimensions are in nanoscale, apposed to one dimensional or two-dimensional nanomaterials which have one or two dimensions greater then a nanoscale. Nanoparticles have amazing applications in medicine pushing the boundaries of what we can accomplish in areas like medical imaging and drug and gene delivery. Nanoparticles are replacing conventional organic dyes used to dye tissue and cells for imagining with quantum dots. In drug delivery, they are using natural nano-polymers delivery methods to increase the solubility of drugs and prolong the

Xianglong et al. found similar results (2) in their paper. The cell number on the Nanotube with 30 nm diameter was significantly higher than the one without the nanotubes. For each incubation time, the surface with the absence of nanotubes had the least cell adhesion. Even with respect to the filopodia the nanotubes showed similar behavior. On the surface withy nanotubes of 30 nm diameter, the actin of the cells was organized along the spreading direction and had formed many filopodia. Interestingly, most of the cells on the surface of 80 nm diameter group maintained a round or oval shape, but the cells also stretched out many filopodia. Cells on the three nanotextured surface had stretched out many filopodia and some lamellipodia. In particular, the cellular cytoskeleton of cells on the 80 nm surface achieved a more homogeneous and extensive arrangement compared with those of the other three groups. The shapes of cells grown on the SLA + 30 nm and SLA + 80 nm surfaces were clearly different. It was observed that those grown on the SLA + 80 nm surface were the most irregularly shaped, while those grown on the SLA + 30 nm surfaces had relatively regular shapes.

Doctors also have used robotic surgery to improve the accuracy of procedures, especially in cancer cases.

Nanotechnology involves the handling of functional systems at a very small scale (Bamrungsap, Zhao, Chen, Wang, Fu, Tan & Li, 2012). When talking about nanotechnology in relation to health, it can commonly be referred to as nanomedicine. Nanotechnology, specifically nanoparticles, have had a recent uprising in research studies. Fortunately new studies are proving to show how nanoparticles can aid in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. The correlation between both lung cancer and nanotechnology in modern day medicine, is believed to be very beneficial to patients and doctors

Robotic surgery is a computer assisted surgery method that allows doctors to use the assistance of computers and programmed robots to perform highly precise and controlled surgical operations. These procedures are usually performed through tiny cuts and incisions and are therefore minimally invasive. The surgery can thus be performed with less pain, less blood loss and also a reduced healing time. [1]

The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to his supervisor Dr. Manish K Tiwari for the guidance. The motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge of this supervisor encouraged the author a lot. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Parashkev Nachev for his innovative ideas and the help in brain model design. Besides, the author’s thanks also goes to the friends in the Nanoengineered Systems Lab: Zhuyang Chen, Feihuang Fang and Dr. Chaoyi Peng for their encouragement and useful comments.

“The prefix ‘nano’ stems from the ancient Greek word for ‘dwarf’. In science, it means one billionth (10 to the minus 9) of something, thus a nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter, or 0.000000001 meters. A nanometer is about three to five atoms wide, or some 40,000 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. A virus is typically 100 nm in size.” (Paddock) “The ability to manipulate structures and properties at the nanoscale in medicine is like having a sub-microscopic lab bench on which you can handle cell components, viruses or pieces of DNA, using a range of tiny tools, robots and tubes.” (Paddock) There is one type of microscope in the world that has the ability to see things at the nano scale. That microscope is a scanning tunneling microscope. It has the ability to zoom in on an object by 1,000,000 times as the average high school and college microscope only reaches 100(Nano.gov).

Said physicist Richard P. Feynman in his visionary talk to the American Physical Society, when he envisioned the fabrication of micro- and nano devices and declared that one day the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica could be written on the head of a pin. Feynman’s vision has finally begun to manifest, thanks to ever more sophisticated microelectronics. Micro and nano scale machines are ushering a multibillion-dollar market as they are being incorporated in virtually every electronic devices.