A 51-year-old woman seeking assistive hearing surgery has become the first patient to successfully undergo robot-assisted cochlear implantation in a clinical trial, reports a new study in the 15 March issue of Science Robotics. The surgical system involves a robotic drill optimized for arguably the riskiest part of the surgery - drilling a tunnel deep through skull bone into the inner ear. This robot drills with the highest degree of accuracy yet reported for a medical device of its kind, and is equipped with a plethora of safety measures, including an optical camera that can track the robot on a scale of 25 microns - less than the width of a human hair. 'Our procedure is a first step...
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