Endoscopic sinus surgery support mechanism with mechanical impedance characteristics for high accuracy positioning

In endoscopic sinus surgery, the diseased part is so narrow that it's difficult to staff assistants around. So, surgeon has to hold the endoscope with his one hand and manipulate surgical tool by the other hand. Therefore, he cannot perform an operation satisfactorily so that endoscopic support mechanism is needed. We took in Mechanical Gravity Canceller : holds a posture without actuators to endoscopic support mechanism. And we developed high accuracy positioning endoscopic support mechanism with adjustability of the mechanical impedance characteristics. As evaluation experiment, we used realistic sinus head dummy and had otologist perform an operation to this head dummy with endoscopic support mechanism to compare to one-handed surgery. As a result, the force given to head dummy was reduced. Thus we can say this endoscopic support mechanism is effective for endoscopic sinus surgery.