Zero Gravity Operation (A Success)

French Surgeon, Dominique Martin, removed a fatty cyst from the arm of a volunteer patient in what is the first surgery to be carried out in zero gravity. The 11 minute operation – aboard a plane – was performed in 32 sequences, during which the aircraft flew in arcs putting it into free fall and creating weightless conditions for 22 seconds each time.The surgical instruments were held in place by powerful magnets and the surgeons by harnesses. The absence of gravity made the surgeons work harder: “Cardiac output is reduced as blood doesn’t pump in the same way. Above all it flows out of a wound in spheres, so we had to create a special vacuum to contain it,” Martin said.Future operations in space could be performed using special robots: “Today, a robot can’t operate in weightless conditions. We’re learning and then we’ll program it to work in our place,” Martin said.