Nghe An Cancer Hospital, one of five hospitals in the country uses this modern robot. Photos of Nghe An Department of Science and Technology.

Getting tumor tissue samples is easy if the tumor is on the surface of the body, but it will be difficult if the tumor is deep in the internal organs (lung tumors, liver tumors, brain tumors and etc). As a result, biopsy techniques are usually performed only in a few specialized hospitals and often have to be repeated several times to obtain the necessary tissue samples. In particular, lung tumors located in the chest, near the heart and large blood vessels, nerves, lymph nodes are always moving in the breathing, so getting the right tissue samples is difficult.

Accordingly, from August 2015, Nghe An Cancer Hospital applied to robot technology in the biopsy of lung tumors and other organs in general. This is a minimally invasive technique; the doctor will use a biopsy needle to cut a specimen from unknown injury for pathological, bacterial, or genetic diagnosis.

The biopsy-assisted positioning system has very high accuracy, so it can carry out in difficult and dangerous positions that a normal robot can’t do. Specifically, tumor biopsy, lymph nodes near the heart, in the mediastinum, adjacent to large blood vessels, lung tumors, bones, spine and internal organs  to ensure accuracy in the diagnosis of cancer.