Robotic surgery throws up images of scalpel-wielding androids making precise little incisions, and the truth is not far from it. The robotic arms manoeuvring the tiny surgical instruments are remotely controlled by a highly-trained surgeon from a console across the room. It’s a bit like watch ing a video game while a skilled gamer expertly hacks and snips life-eating tissue away to save the life of the target, who, in this case, is a patient with prostate cancer. The surgeon is Dr Ashutosh Tewari, the director of the Institute for Prostate Cancer, at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. One of the world’s leading experts on robotic surgery, he has done over 3,500 of them to remove walnut-size prostate affected by cancer, which is among the top five cancers globally.
