Brain surgery calls for the most accomplished hands, but even neuro-surgeons are now turning to robots for help. In May, in the first operation of its kind, Garnette Sutherland of the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine used a robot, called neuroArm, to remove a tumour from a young woman's brain.rnNeuroArm, which Dr Sutherland helped develop, works with an MRI scanner for microsurgery. A surgeon sitting at a workstation manipulates a set of joystick-type controls while watching video and other images. Robots are more precise with a scalpel or laser than a person could ever be. And they can enter the body through a small "keyhole" incision no bigger than 2cm (0.8 inches), which means that surgery is less invasive. That improves the prognosis and speeds convalescence.
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