PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Rhode Island Hospital is using new robotic technology designed with improved accuracy and safety to help guide neurosurgeons through brain and spine surgeries.
Lifespan’s Norman Prince Neurosciences Institute added two new Globus ExcelsiusGPS robotic surgical systems and is the first site in New England to use the technology for cranial and spinal applications.
Surgeons performed the first ExcelsiusGPS-guided procedures at the hospital earlier this week.
Dr. Wael Asaad, director of the Functional Neurosurgery and Epilepsy division, performed the first cranial surgery using the device.
“This is a new generation of surgical technology,” Asaad said.
The device uses a surgical plan specific to the patient’s anatomy and guides surgeons like a GPS, allowing surgeons to perform not just the procedure, but the planning for it in the same setting.
“For different kinds of neurosurgical procedures, it’s important to be able to target circuits very precisely, within a millimeter or two,” Asaad explained.
Courtesy: Kendall Lane, Lifespan
“That allows us to do things like treat the movement problems in Parkinson’s disease, treat epilepsy, even treat some really debilitating psychiatric problems such as intractable OCD,” he added.
Asaad said there are still other ways to perform the same procedures using different technology, but they often involve additional surgeries and bulkier equipment.
“When you tell patients that we can instead do this with a robot, that’s very attractive to most patients,” he said.
