New Delhi: A hospital located in Kochi, Kerala, has become the first in the Asia-Pacific region to use robotic technology for neurosurgery. The Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences confirmed that it has used the French-made Rosa Robotic Assistant to successfully carry out surgeries to treat epilepsy patients.

The new generation robotic surgical technology, ROSA will assist a broad range of surgical interventions to treat Parkinson and Epilepsy treatments, brain tumours, hemorrhagic strokes and endoscopic surgery of the brain. The robot is comparable to a "GPS" for the brain and can be used for guidance, precision and accuracy during a variety of cranial procedures. It requires surgical planning with preoperative imaging data, patient registration and precise positioning and handling of instrument. To date, ROSA, is one of two robotic assistants approved for neurosurgical procedures and in routine clinical use in Europe, the United States and Canada, claimed the Meditech of France, its manufacturers.

"Though robotics doesn't replace a surgeon's skill and cannot accomplish all neurosurgical tasks, it provides a precise, mathematically correct trajectory to the destination in the brain. In that trajectory, it will guide the surgeon's instruments for whatever be the purpose. Besides providing this precision and accuracy, it allows the surgeons to focus on other aspects of the surgery," said Dr. Prem Nair, Medical Director of Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences at a press conference in New Delhi today.

The Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences has already commissioned a da Vinci robotic technology for surgical solutions for Gynec-oncology, Urology and Gastrointestinal cases. Progressively, more robotic surgical machines will be inducted to set up India's first Centre for Excellence in Robotics in the healthcare sector at the Kochi facility of Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences.

"The field of robotic neurosurgery is still in its early stage of development and we have been given the tasks of developing several of these applications. Medtech specifically has developed a robot for spine surgery and we have been given the task of helping expanding the applications of robotics in spine surgery," said Dr. Ashok Pillai, Professor of Neurosurgery and Robotics at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences.

Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences is credited with carrying out the first successful double hand transplant in South Asia, first successful treatment for acute blood cancer (myeloid leukaemia) in the country through a relatively new treatment protocol named 'Microtransplant' and third successful pancreas-kidney transplant in India. It also boasts of the rare facility in India for diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects and epilepsy.

The Amrita Advanced Centre for Epilepsy is the first center in India to establish Stereo-EEG - a minimally invasive technique for accurately recording and studying seizures from the brain to plan curative surgery.