What is

Minimally Invasive Surgery ?

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS, in german: MIC) is a new kind of surgery which gets more and more common nowadays. Another well-known expression is 'endoscopic surgery'. With this method, a surgical operation is performed by the help of:

through natural body openings or small artificial incisions ('keyhole surgery').

In comparison to the usual, open surgery, there exist several advantages for the patient:

less pain, less strain of the organism
faster recovery
small injuries (aesthetic reasons)
economic gain (shorter illness time)

On the other hand, there exist some important disadvantages for the surgeon, too:

restricted vision
difficult handling of the instruments
very restricted mobility
difficult hand-eye coordination
no tactile perception

Typical instrument arrangement for the cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal). This is the most frequently done minimally-invasive operation. The endoscopic camera is put in the abdoman through the navel, the instruments through small incisions with approximately 5-15 mm diameter. In the upper left corner, the endoscopic view is displayed.

Endoscopic procedures in the human abdoman are also called 'laparoscopy'. The cholecystectomy is used as prototypic application for our demonstrator.

Back to page 'Karlsruhe Endoscopic Surgery Trainer'

This page is maintained by Christian Kuhn, FZK/IAI-SK
E-Mail: kuhn@iai.fzk.de
Last modification: January 16, 1997.