Anicet Mbida 06:52, March 14, 2023

Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning what is best in terms of innovation.

This Tuesday, he is interested in printing organs directly inside the body that could replace transplants.

Today's innovation is a taste of the surgery of the future.

Rather than transplanting an organ, we could soon print it directly inside the body.

Rather than splitting us open to treat a diseased liver, for example, we're going to slip a tiny robot through a very small incision in the navel.

This little robot will then be remote-controlled to the desired location.

Then the surgeon will perform his intervention remotely.

All his gestures will be reproduced by the robot: stroke of the scalpel to cut, turn of the needle to suture… All this on a microscopic scale.

But it already existed.

The novelty is that this type of robot can now apply a drug directly to the organ inside the body.

He can even create fabrics on site by 3D printing them.

It works like a conventional printer.

But instead of depositing ink, we deposit human cells, layer by layer, to repair the damaged organ.

Better: we could even make a new one, entirely, directly in the body rather than having to graft someone else's.

And we could make, like that, any organ?

Eventually, yes.

Why not a heart, a liver or a lung.

Advantage: we would put an end to the waiting lists of donors and all the problems of rejection since the organ is created directly with the cells of the patient.

It's the Holy Grail of medicine, doing it like in science fiction movies: being able to instantly recreate a defective organ.

But hey, we're still talking about very complex organs that we already can't reproduce outside the body.

So we will start with simpler interventions.

Like closing wounds, making gastric bandages or replacing pieces of cartilage.

And that is already possible?

Are we already able to heal in this way?

No not yet.

The robot is still experimental.

It was designed by researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

For now, it is only tested on animals.

But once again, this demonstrates the current trend in medical research: finding treatments that will generate the least traces, scars and side effects.

The least invasive treatments possible.