Future Technology and Customized Solutions for Endoaortic Surgery

Endovascular intervention is a rapidly evolving field of vascular surgery, allowing more complex aortic pathology to be managed in a minimally invasive fashion. The use of robotic technology in vascular surgery is a comparatively new field of work considering existing applications in general, urological, and orthopaedic surgery. Robotic catheters were introduced for the management of cardiac disease including atrial fibrillation (Saliba et al. 2008; Kanagaratnam et al. 2008) and coronary stent implantation (Beyar et al. 2006). Several commercially available devices have been designed for use within the vascular tree and use a broad variety of engineering principles to facilitate fine motor control of the catheter tip. The Niobe Navigation System (Stereotaxis; St. Louis, MO, USA) was designed for cardiac intervention and consists of two permanent magnets mounted on mechanical positioners on either side of the fluoroscopy table, creating a spherical uniform magnetic field. The computer workstation allows the operator to select the desired field vectors by changing the orientation of the outer magnets relative to each other. The catheter tip consists of small magnetic implants, which are navigated by the magnetic field.