Miniature Robotic
Device
Assisted in Spinal
Tumor Evacuation
(Caesarea, Israel,
September 1st 2005) A miniature robotic
device was used for the first time to remove a benign tumor from a young
patient's spine. The system developed and manufactured by Mazor Surgical
Technologies, the SpineAssist, has raised the bar in
the medical arena and is a major breakthrough in localizing tumors in the
thoracic spine.
Surgeons at
the Sheba Medical center in Israel,
headed by Dr. Nachshon
Knoller and Dr. Alon Friedlander, used the SpineAssist to
intra-operatively localize and point to the precise location of an Osteoid Osteoma tumor in the thoracic spine.
The surgeons'
conclusions in this case found that the SpineAssist miniature robotic guidance
system enabled complete excision of the benign thoracic tumor with minimal
resection of healthy bone, while significantly reducing the use of fluoroscopy
during the operation.
The
SpineAssist technology allows for a highly focused surgical approach, immediate
and accurate localization of the tumor resulting in a less traumatic yet highly
effective treatment.
The
SpineAssist is currently installed in several hospitals in the US, Korea
and Israel
and though it was originally developed to assist surgeons with pedicle screw
insertion, it is now also being used for tumor evacuation. The results are very
encouraging, says Mazor's CEO, Ori
Hadomi, and create a promising potential into a wide range of
surgical applications that the SpineAssist can support.
Mazor was
founded 4 years ago by Prof. Moshe
Shoham who has been researching medical robotics for many
years. Under the Technion umbrella, Mazor has flourished and now employs 30
people. $9.5M have been raised since the company's founding, among the
investors that believe in our innovative technology are: Alice Ventures,
Johnson & Johnson, Shalom Equity Fund, Dor
Ventures, ITP, Proseed and the Technion Incubator.