国内英语新闻:Doctors perform rare robotic surgery in India

NEW DELHI, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Doctors in India have claimed to have successfully performed a rare robotic heart surgery on a 23- year-old person at a hospital in the southern Indian city of Chennai, local media reported Saturday.

Dr. R. Ravi Kumar, the Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Disease at the Chettinad Health City, said the robotically assisted procedure involved replacing both the mitral and the aortal valve simultaneously.

The surgery carried out on D. Vijayakanth, an auto driver from Vellore, was done by a three armed robot, took four hours and cost 225,000 rupees (4,500 U.S. dollars).

"The best part about using a robot in cardiac surgery is that the patient's heart need not be opened and the surgery can be done using a small 4cm incision. This is not possible with normal surgeries without a robot," Dr Ravi Kumar was quoted by local daily The Times of India as saying.

Robotic surgery, which is fairly new in the country, can be used for a gamut of medical procedures, said Dr Ravi Kumar.

"It requires a lot of precision and intense training because though the robotic hands do the surgery, it has to be controlled by a trained surgeon. One of the biggest disadvantages is the lack of sensory perception which is there when the surgeon actually does the surgery himself," he said.