Welcome MARS! New Robot joins MIS team
January 13, 2025
A new robot has joined Stanford’s Minimally-Invasive Surgery Team. Starting last week, Magnetic Assisted Robotic Surgery or MARS will assist on bariatric and gallbladder surgeries.
“It’s very different robot from the current one,” said Dr. Dan Azagury, Chief of Stanford’s Minimally-Invasive and Bariatric Surgery Section referring to the DaVinci robot. “[MARS] is essentially an assistant robot. It will hold the camera for you, but more importantly, the other arm of the robot hold a magnet this allows us to reduce the number of incisions we use in laparoscopic procedures.”
According to Levita, which makes MARS, magnetic surgery has been shown to reduce pain, improve cosmetic results, and lead to faster recovery times.
“We place a metal grasper inside the body, and that is manipulated with the robotic arm from the outside of the body,” said Azagury. “It’s pretty cool!”
Stanford’s MARS robot is the first of this kind on the West Coast. It’s also the first time in the world that trainees (both residents and fellows) were able to use it.
(L to R) General Surgery Resident Dr. Lia Delaney, Bariatric/MIS Chief Dr. Dan Azagury, Levita CEO Dr. Alberto Rodriguez-Navarro, and a representative from Levato. This was the first time in the world that trainees were able to use the MARS robot.
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