Unlike the two surgical assistant robots previously introduced by Gulou Hospital, the Pediguard Pathfinder robot is actually a hand-held robot with a length of 35 cm and a width of 3.5 cm. Because it is very small, doctors can operate it with one hand. Professor Qiu Yong, director of spinal surgery in Nanjing Gulou Hospital, told the reporter that the biggest risk of spinal surgery is that the spinal cord may be damaged during pedicle screw implantation. "The distance between the nail and the spinal cord is only 1mm, that is to say, the doctor can't drive the nail with a deviation of more than 0.5mm", said Professor Qiu Yong, but the spinal cord is invisible during the operation. Traditional operations are based on the doctor's experience. There are also some large hospitals that will introduce large navigation equipment for imaging to help doctors determine the location of nails, but this equipment is expensive and bulky, which will cause radiation damage to doctors and patients.
This new path-finding robot uses the difference of bone density between different bones to judge the distance, and prompts the depth and position through sound, which is equivalent to a micro-surgical "navigator". It can not only help surgeons to place nails accurately, shorten the operation time, but also significantly reduce the dose of ionizing radiation received by doctors and patients in the operating room. Because of its convenience and mature technology, the equipment is especially suitable for primary hospitals and improving the surgical skills of young doctors.