Surgery is a branch of medicine that involves the manual treatment of diseases, deformities, and injuries through means of various forms of procedures, or operations. This branch of medicine has evolved over thousands of years, and with the extensive research that is currently underway, modern medicine's knowledge and advancements in terms of surgical techniques seems to be growing exponentially. With each new discovery and advancement comes many more opportunities and the potential for further study and research, leading to seemingly endless possibilities in terms of how advanced modern surgical techniques can become. The recent research and development in the fields of minimally invasive and robotic surgery has merely opened the door to a world of new advancements, and with each passing day the research in these fields comes closer to making those possibilities a reality. Now, amidst both promising results and fierce debates from scientists worldwide, the research continues, and with the introduction of these techniques into operating rooms worldwide, doctors now see a rapid rise in the success and survival rates of surgeries that were both dangerous and inconsistently effective in the past.
Minimally invasive surgery has been the center of surgical research over the past fifteen years, since the first endoscopic (with the use of a small inserted camera) surgery was performed in France in 1988. Endoscopic surgery research was greatly pursued during the 1990's, and developed into laproscopic surgery, a technique used around the world today. Using this technique, surgeons can remove or repair a part of the body without actually performing a major incision during surgery. In fact, they are able to operate through much smaller incisions than ever before, in some cases reducing incisions that were up to eight inches long to only a quarter of an inch. In a laproscopic surgery, a long thin tube with a very small camera attached to the end (4 - 6 mm) is inserted into the targeted area, which is usually slightly inflated with CO2 gas to provide for better instrument mobility during surgery (Myers 2).
