Robot used for eye operation

Surgeons at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital have performed what was claimed to be the world's first operation inside the eye using a robot.

In an experimental procedure, they used a remotely controlled robot to lift a membrane 100th of a millimetre thick from the 70-year-old patient’s retina.

The ‘mechanical hand’ operated through a single hole less than 1mm in diameter, going in and out of the eye through the same hole during various steps of the procedure, even as the eye rotated. It was designed to eliminate unwanted tremors in the surgeon's hand during tiny surgical manipulations.

Professor Robert MacLaren, who completed the operation, said: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that we have just witnessed a vision of eye surgery in the future.