A truly powerful robot: sucking away blood clots in the brain

    Intracranial hemorrhage occurs when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures, and blood leaks out, forming clots that then compress surrounding brain tissue. This phenomenon is not uncommon and difficult to treat, with a mortality rate of 40%. Fortunately, Vanderbilt University in the United States has recently created a super robot that can eliminate these blood clots in a safe and fashionable way.

    Normal surgery is a high-risk way to remove blood clots. If the clot is not outside the brain, a hole must be drilled into the skull, which disturbs and destroys healthy brain tissue. Sometimes the damage caused by surgery is even greater than the benefits of removing the blood clot, so many doctors only use anti-inflammatory care methods, but cannot cure it.

    This amazing machine was designed by a group of doctors and engineers. It has a straight tube at the outer end, less than one-twentieth of an inch in diameter, which is a small hole-like thing that can be inserted into the skull, adjacent to the blood clot.

    The machine is equipped with a CT scanner, and the robot controls the thin cannula to carefully advance into the brain until the machine indicates that it has reached the location of the clot. At this time, a small inner tube with a sharp needle inside the tube extends out of the tube, and the other end is connected to an external suction pump, which can suck out the blood clot in the brain through a series of expansion, cancellation, and rotation actions.

    In tests, the system successfully aspirated 92 percent of simulated blood clots, and the engineers are working to achieve 100 percent aspiration.