The Future of Laparoscopy: Single Incision, NOTES and Robots

  
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The skill sets of laparoscopy, endoscopy, robotics and even interventional cardiology are all converging to create least invasive surgeries that take laparoscopy as a point of departure but change how surgeons access the abdominal cavity. Start-ups are innovating to supply the new surgical instruments.

For surgeons, it has always been a necessary evil to make skin incisions on the abdomen to access the peritoneal cavity and surgically treat the pathologies of internal organs. The ideal, of course, would be if surgeons could root out disease without cutting into patients' bellies at all. Physicians have been steadily making progress toward that goal since the 1980s, when the introduction of laparoscopic tools allowed surgery to take a giant leap forward. Now physicians routinely access the abdominal cavity using several "keyhole" incisions, rather than using one large incision. But in the two decades since the advent of laparoscopy, surgeons have only inched closer to that ultimate ideal – incisionless surgery.

The number and size of ports of entry have diminished over the years, and a small number of innovative surgeons...

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