Surgical robotics will get talked about the best way AI will get talked about in each different business proper now. It’s the factor everybody in medtech finally brings up when the dialog turns to the way forward for surgical procedure. As robotic-assisted procedures unfold throughout specialties, from urology to orthopedics, the robotic itself understandably will get a lot of the consideration. Intuitive’s da Vinci system stays the best-known instance, however the class now contains a whole era of platforms purpose-built for particular procedures. What goes largely unnoticed when speaking about robotic surgical procedure and its future? The work behind the scenes for these robots to operate safely, like fluid administration..
Fluid automation isn’t driving robotic surgical procedure ahead by itself, and calling it the engine behind the pattern would overstate issues. A extra correct description can be to name it a expertise enabler; it solves an issue robotic platforms can’t resolve on their very own, which is delivering a exact, steady stream of fluid that retains the surgical website seen, cool, and clear throughout a process.
In conventional procedures, that job used to fall to a nurse or surgical technician manually working a saline syringe who would modify stream by really feel and expertise. As soon as a surgeon is seated at a console toes away from the affected person, bodily faraway from the operative area, that technique now not works. A setup like that requires a fluid supply system constructed to match the robotic’s personal precision: automated, programmable. and dependable sufficient to run unattended for a whole case.
Use Case One: Treating an Enlarged Prostate with Robotic Urology
Take the therapy of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), for instance. That is the prostate enlargement that, in keeping with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, impacts roughly a 3rd of males over 65.
Robotic-assisted techniques constructed for BPH therapy, together with the platform developed by Procept BioRobotics, use image-guided, minimally invasive strategies that rely on steady, managed irrigation to keep up visibility and handle tissue all through the process. These techniques have gone from area of interest to broader utilization in just some years, and the fluid supply expertise behind them has needed to maintain tempo, matching the stream precision and sterility that image-guided robotic procedures demand.
Use Case Two: Robotic Orthopedics’ Knee and Hip Substitute
Robotic-assisted joint substitute, one of many fastest-growing classes in orthopedic surgical procedure, is one other good instance. Platforms similar to Stryker’s Mako system assist surgeons form bone with sub-millimeter precision, so implants match extra precisely than they might with conventional instrumentation. That precision has two byproducts: warmth and particles. As robotic tooling cuts and shapes bone, irrigation is required to chill the chopping instrument and wash away bone particulate and blood, conserving the surgical area clear and secure all through.
The shift towards robotic help in joint substitute is rising. A 2025 evaluate within the Journal of Robotic Surgery discovered that robotic-assisted knee substitute quantity elevated greater than sixfold between 2015 and 2020, with adoption projected to succeed in roughly 70 % of all U.S. whole knee replacements by 2030. A Medicare evaluation of greater than 198,000 sufferers cited in that evaluate discovered robotic procedures had been related to shorter hospital stays and decrease complication charges than standard surgical procedure, although researchers warning that long-term functional outcomes between the 2 approaches are nonetheless being studied and don’t but present a transparent, lasting benefit.
Fluid Automation’s Supporting Function
Fluid automation nonetheless isn’t what’s driving the robotic surgical procedure pattern. The robots (and the surgeons utilizing them) stay the story. However as extra specialties undertake robotic-assisted strategies, the applied sciences that help them must scale proper alongside them. Exact, automated irrigation and cooling are shortly changing into a baseline requirement for robotic platforms, the identical approach any new platform outgrows guide workarounds because it matures.
As robotic surgical procedure expands into new specialties and procedures, the applied sciences working behind the scenes (fluid administration included) might want to maintain evolving as properly. Whereas it hardly ever will get talked about alongside the robotic, peristaltic fluid administration is usually what makes the robotic’s a part of the story doable.
About Rodd Turnquist
Rodd Turnquist is Nationwide Gross sales Supervisor, OEM Division at Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Options (WMFTS), the place he works with medical gadget and diagnostic OEMs to pick out and combine fluid-handling elements, primarily peristaltic pumps, into next-generation units. His focus spans purposes like cardiac ablation, surgical irrigation, and precision dosing, the place pump choice and design instantly have an effect on gadget security, efficiency, and time to market.
