Modern surgery has developed rapidly with the scientific advances of the past century. From pioneering treatments in the battlefield to the creation of academic surgery, modern advances have ushered in new age for surgical interventions, one that has moved past being regarded as just an accessory to medicine and is instead is so far advanced that it stands in a league of its own. In the old days, surgical procedures were performed by barbers who, between haircuts and bloodletting, also performed invasive procedures that in no way resemble what we consider as surgery today.

Those invasive procedures were performed in operating rooms once known as operating theatres. The procedures were often performed in front of a live audience while the patient was awake. Now, just a century later, surgery is performed by trained medical doctors and the old operating theaters have been replaced by sterile rooms where robotic systems often perform part of the operation. Indeed, the operating theater is now referred to as the Operating Room of the Future. In recent years even more advanced and futuristic medical technologies have been developed. These technologies – many of them robotics – enable the surgeon to replace biological parts of the human body with smart machines. This new field of Biomedical engineering research has been named Cybernetics.

We must ask ourselves…

When will the day come where man and machine become one? Or are we there already?