An Italian company has unveiled a robot surgeon that carries out so-called 'bloodless surgery".
The robot, called Altair, has been tested in liver operations with very minimal blood loss and is also expected to be useful for kidney ops.
It uses low-frequency electrical current to raise the temperature in the organs so that blood solidifies, allowing surgeons to make incisions without breaking blood vessels.
"The machine is like a comb whose teeth are like tiny needles, spreading heat and coagulating the blood," said Achille Lucio Gaspari of Rome's Tor Vergata University, which helped develop the machine.
Altair was tested on mice and pigs before being tried out on 14 liver patients in Rome, he said.
"It was a success, with no need for transfusions and shorter post-op recovery time.
"In this type of operation, patients typically lose up to a litre of blood. With the robot, only 250 millilitres was shed".
Gaspari said Altair would now undergo "an international multicentre study with a higher number of patients" before being launched on the market.
He said it "showed promise for kidney operations too".
Bloodless operations have already been performed in the United States using a so-called Da Vinci machine similar to Altair.
But the technique has only been used for colon cancer.
