The equipment is made by MAKO and ROSA, two leading brands in the surgical robot market.

According to Dr. Nguyen Quoc Anh, director of Bach Mai Hospital, until now, five surgeries have been conducted free of charge by these robot systems and the patients are recovering well.

He also said that the robot systems allow doctors to perform surgeries with minimally invasive, highly accurate and safe procedures, helping lessen blood losses and pain for patients while reducing the risk of complications for quick recovery.

On February 27, Bach Mai conducted robot surgeries for a patient with a partial knee replacement and one with ventricular dilatation, marking a boom in hi-tech application in treatment and care for patients in Vietnam.

Cao Minh Thuan, 63, from Nghe An Province, who had been diagnosed with ventricular dilatation, was selected to undergo neurosurgery by the ROSA robot.

Dr. Nguyen The Hao, head of the hospital’s Neurological Surgery Department, said that the ROSA system accurately located lesions’ positions. It is also programmable and participates in the operation with its robot arms. Compared with conventional surgeries like microsurgery or endoscopic surgery, the robot surgery causes less trauma and brain injury while shortening the surgery time. After two hours of surgery, the patient was awake.

Another case undergoing knee replacement by a MACO surgical robot system at the hospital is patient Lai Thi Mai, 50, from Hanoi. She was diagnosed with left knee osteoarthritis and had to undergo a partial artificial joint replacement.

With this knee/hip replacement surgical robot, Vietnam is the 15th and most recent country to deploy MAKO. Dr. Hoang Gia Du, head of the Trauma-Orthopedics and Spine Department at Bach Mai Hospital said that compared to conventional knee surgeries, robot surgeries help patients to replace only part of broken joints with smaller incisions and fewer infections, while conserving anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments. After a two-hour surgery, the patient went back to normal.

Bach Mai Hospital is conducting surgeries on MAKO and ROSA systems for several pathologies.

Currently, Bach Mai is conducting surgeries by robot with several pathologies, including knee and hip replacement, ventricular endoscopic surgeries and functional neurological diseases. During the first stage of deployment, Bach Mai will cover the costs for the first patients undergoing robot surgeries.

Praising efforts by Bach Mai’s staff in deploying robots to improve the hospital’s medical capacity, Dr. Luong Ngoc Khue, head of the Medical Examination and Treatment Department at the Ministry of Health, urged Bach Mai to promote to the maximum the efficiency of its equipment with the assistance of foreign experts and put the system into effective use for patient satisfaction.

Dr. Nguyen Quoc Anh affirmed that the application of these robot systems would bring opportunities to access hi-tech therapies for patients in Vietnam at a much lower cost compared to undergoing treatment abroad.

The MAKO and ROSA surgical robot systems, with the state-of-art technologies manufactured in the US, have been licenced by the Ministry of Health for treatment at Bach Mai Hospital. Until now, the surgical robot has developed to the fourth generation with four surgery arms, a smart camera, a wide surgery angle at 540 degrees and 3D images, so it is capable of carrying out surgeries in difficult positions and can freely move in six directions.

Robots have been used to assist with laparoscopic surgery in many countries, such as the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea, since 1980. Currently, surgical robots have become commonplace in large surgery centres and have created a revolution in the treatment of many complex surgical pathologies, such as surgeries on brain tumors in deep locations requiring high precision, as with Parkinson’s, epilepsy, functional neurosurgery, pulmonary cuts, mediastinal tumor cuts, hysterectomy and thoracic, cardiological, musculoskeletal and spinal surgeries.