Medical Microinstruments, a robotics company dedicated to increasing treatment options and improving clinical outcomes for patients with complex conditions, says it has completed a preclinical study that demonstrated the feasibility of the Symani Surgical System in neurosurgical procedures.
Adnan Siddiqui, M.D., Ph.D., CEO and chief medical officer of the Jacobs Institute and Vice Chair and Professor of Neurosurgery in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, successfully repaired a blood vessel in the brain in an animal model using the Symani Surgical System, the first such robotic-assisted microsurgery demonstration in the brain.
Mark Toland, CEO of MMI, says: “Dr Siddiqui’s breakthrough demonstration showed the benefits of robotic precision and control when operating on brain tissue.
“The robotic platform allowed him to perform extremely delicate maneuvers deep in the skull cavity that would not have been possible with the human hand alone.
“The success of this procedure opens the possibility of expanding Symani’s reach into neurosurgery, a field of medicine that involves the most fragile anatomy and has yet to benefit from robotic-assisted microsurgical capabilities.”
The study aimed to both collect feedback on Symani from a highly experienced neurosurgeon and assess the feasibility of the platform as a tool to treat neurological conditions.
It was performed at the Jacobs Institute, a nonprofit medical device innovation center located in Buffalo, NY, which aims to accelerate the development of next-generation technologies in vascular medicine.
Dr Siddiqui says: “Symani offered added control that allowed me to access and repair a vein just under 1 millimeter in diameter, with clips spaced 4 millimeters apart.
“It required techniques that would be extraordinarily difficult for most micro-neurosurgeons to replicate without robotic assistance, using sutures so small they are barely visible to the naked eye.
“Based on this excellent initial experience, I have no doubt Symani could be highly effective during a wide range of complex neurosurgical procedures with the development of additional microsurgical tools. In fact, I believe it is ready for superficial temporal to middle cerebral artery bypass surgery today.”
The Symani Surgical System is designed to provide enhanced precision and control for the anastomosis and suturing of microscopic vessels with the thinnest available sutures.
With the world’s smallest surgical robotic wrist, called NanoWrist, Symani enables surgeons to replicate the natural movements of the human hand at the micro scale.
It also features motion-scaling technology that reduces the hand’s scale of movement by as much as 20x, giving surgeons more freedom to operate on microscopic anatomy.
Surgeons have leveraged the Symani Surgical System in over 1,000 cases globally and more than two dozen publications highlight positive clinical outcomes.
It is designed to help restore quality of life for patients, accelerate the number of surgeons able to push the boundaries of complex procedures for delicate anatomy, and enable hospitals to expand their open surgical programs.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted De Novo Classification to the Symani Surgical System in April 2024, making it the only commercially available platform in the US for reconstructive microsurgery. It is available for commercial use in Europe and parts of Asia Pacific.
