That is the beauty of the ‘‘minimally invasive’’ procedures, where instead of incisions of five inches and more, all the work is done by instruments inserted into the body through three or four half-inch cuts. Result: The trauma is reduced to a fraction, the recovery is faster and even the pain is much less.

‘‘Only three places in India have the facility of robotic surgery,’’ one of his teammates proudly says, ‘‘including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences’’. Part of the reason is that the medical community is divided over the necessity of the

Rs 12-crore instrument. Most agree that a robotic surgery is only essential for really complicated and time consuming processes, like removal of a cancerous prostrate gland, in which a 10-hour procedure can be reduced to two hours.

The essential instrument in minimally invasive surgery is the scope, explains Dr Arun Prasad, Senior Consultant of Apollo Surgical Centre’s Minimal Access Surgery. Also known as endoscope, this is a thin rod-like instrument, mounted with a tiny video camera and a powerful light, which functions like a telescope, projecting the magnified interior view of the body onto monitors.

The rest of the instruments include the usual scissors, forceps and the rest, about 2 to 3 mm in size, also mounted on thin rods, which are inserted into body through hollow rods called canulae, which hold the half-inch incisions open.

The technique is not new. Dr Jacobeus performed the first visual examination of abdominal organs in 1910. But in 1987, Phillip Mouret performed the first such operation in France.

... contd.