On the afternoon of February 27, a robotic arm was wheeled into the operating room. This surgical robotic arm is a new “weapon” independently developed by the Department of Otolaryngology, PUMCH. Having evolved from a patent certificate to a product applied in surgeries, the surgical arm enables surgeons to operate with both hands and instantly switch between one-hand and two-hand operation and provides a stable surgical field of view. Such functions make endoscopic surgeries more precise and fine-grained.

The 8-year-old Xinxin (pseudonym) developed hearing loss in his right ear 5 months ago and was suspected to have middle ear cholesteatoma. He was scheduled to have mastoidectomy and cholesteatoma removal via ear canal + implant of ossicular prosthesis. Considering that ossicles are among the smallest bones in the human body and that the patient is very young, both the endoscope and microscope were needed, and this was when the surgical arm came in handy. Spared from holding the endoscope in one hand, the surgeon could thus operate with both hands, which improves efficiency and safety. Within just 2 hours, the operation was successfully completed. Xinxin has recovered and been discharged from the hospital.

▲The surgical arm was a useful aide to Professor Feng Guodong

In the conventional ENT endoscopic surgeries, the surgeon needs to hold the endoscope in one hand and the surgical instruments in the other. Uunder the very limited space, the lenses are prone to blood stains, and other problems may occur as well. To address this issue, Prof. Feng Guodong explored through trials and errors based on years of clinical experience. He eventually succeeded and was granted the invention patent of “assisting support system for nasal endoscopic surgeries” in 2005, which evolved to the surgical robotic arm currently in use. The granting of patent was followed by rounds of validation and tweaking over more than a decade under the guidance of Gao Zhiqiang, former director of the Department of Otolaryngology and support of Lyu Wei, executive deputy director (presiding) of the department, before the surgical arm was finally put into use around the Chinese New Year in 2023.

The surgical arm has many benefits: the well-calculated counterweight effectively relieves the fatigue of the endoscope-holding hand, the stable display effectively relieves visual fatigue, and the stable lens position obviously reduces the contact between the lens and the tissue of the surgical cavity and thus reduces contamination; in addition, the surgical arm can be locked or unlocked at the press of one button.

The surgical arm has been funded by Beijing Patent Commercialization Fund, PUMCH Key Clinical Research Fund, the National Science and Technology Support Program during the 12th Five-year Plan Period, and the Innovative Pharmaceutical Varieties R&D, Incubation and Industrial Support Capacity Building Project under the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, etc. The commercialization was undertaken by Xianju Xingzhi Technology Co., Ltd. Now the Department of Otolaryngology and Neurosurgery have already completed many surgeries of the middle ear, skull base and pharynx with the aid of the surgical arm. This aide will be used in surgeries of the spine and joints, obstetrics and gynecology, ultrasound-guided puncture and other fields to benefit more patients.

Written by Zhao Yong and Wang Jingxia

Photographed by Sun Liang

Translated by Liu Haiyan

Edited by Wang Weiqing and Wang Yao