机器人辅助手术：寻找小马

 

Chandru Sundaram, Ralph Clayman, and Art Smith asked me to give an historical perspective on how we got into robotics and, in particular, prostate cancer surgery. I consider this a privilege.

It started with two patients. These were surgical triumphs: Patients who had undergone open radical prostatectomy in 1998 with impeccable results—no transfusion, no complications, continent, potent and with undetectable prostate-specific antigen levels. These men had achieved the “trifecta,” although we had not realized it; the word would not enter the prostate cancer world for quite a few years yet. Ralph Clayman had introduced laparoscopy for renal surgery in 1990, but it had not yet beco