The Laser Probe, The iKnife and The Cutting Edge of Surgery

If the thought of going under the knife fills you with fear, be reassured. No longer is surgery the brutal and hazardous experience faced by our ancestors. Thanks to wonders such as laparoscopy, robotic solutions, and, more recently, the iKnife and the laser probe, surgical intervention is getting safer all the time. Archaeologists believe that people have been carrying out surgery for up to 11,000 years. Cranial surgery, known as trephination, probably dates back to the Neolithic era. It involved drilling a hole in the skull of a living person. Speculation suggests it was done to cure disorders such as convulsions, fractures, headaches, and infections. The Ancient Egyptians used the same operation for "letting out" headaches and migraine. From 1812 onward, the New England Journal of Medicine offers accounts of procedures that would now be considered gruesome, such as passing a hook through a man's pupil during the removal of a cataract, and using leeches for bloodletting. Pioneers of their time, both surgeons and patients displayed remarkable courage. Leap from there to the present, and you have minimally invasive surgery where even a heart transplant is now relatively routine. From January 1988 to July 2016, 64,055 cardiac transplants have taken place in the United States, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Advances in minimally invasive surgery In 1987, a French gynecologist performed the first recognized laparoscopic surgery to remove a gal...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news