Weight is over for zero-gravity surgery

A FRENCH medical team yesterday hailed as a success pioneering surgery on a man in near zero-gravity conditions on a flight looping in the air like a roller coaster to mimic weightlessness.

The five doctors and their patient landed safely at an airport in south-west France after a three-hour flight, during which the medical team performed a 10-minute surgical operation to remove a cyst from the man’s arm.

Chief surgeon Dominique Martin said the near zero-gravity operation, which was the first ever performed on a human, was not technically difficult, but was aimed at breaking a barrier in medical expertise.

The surgery went “exactly as we had expected,” Martin told reporters near Merignac airport, outside Bordeaux.

“All the data we collected allows us to think that operating on a human in the conditions of space would not present insurmountable problems.”

The medical team was strapped down to the walls of the Airbus 300 Zero-G plane as it looped up and down in a total of 25 roller coaster-like manoeuvres, called parabolas.

Each dive, creating conditions close to weightlessness, lasted 22 seconds, and the doctors operated during those intervals only.

The operation, announced Monday by Dr Martin and the French National Centre for Space Studies, is part of a project backed by the European Space Agency.

The ultimate aim of the project is to develop Earth-guided surgical space robots.

The patient, Philippe Sanchot, was chosen because he is an avid bungee-jumper, and accustomed to dramatic gravitational shifts, said Frederique Albertoni, a spokeswoman for the Bordeaux hospital where Dr Martin works.

Mr Sanchot and the six-member medical team underwent training in zero-gravity machines — much like those used by astronauts — to prepare for the operation.

The cyst removal operation was chosen because it is relatively simple and involves a local anesthetic, Dr Martin said, describing the procedure as a “feasibility study” for possible surgery in space one day.