An Amazing Medical Breakthrough 1 Freddie is a reporter for his school’s newspaper. He’s been assigned to write an article on a new type of surgery taking place at a local hospital. The hospital has promised Freddie a tour of an operating room where the new surgery is performed. Upon arriving at the hospital, he is greeted by Sanja, a spokesperson for the hospital. 2 “Freddie, this type of surgery is very new,” Sanja told him. In fact, this hospital is one of the few hospitals currently using it.” Freddie followed Sanja down a quiet hallway. Sanja turned to him and said, “There’s actually minor surgery being performed right now. I thought you might want to see the procedure for yourself.” A Surgical Robot 3 They walked into a small auditorium where one wall was made entirely of glass. As Freddie walked toward the glass, he could see an operating room below. Wow! he thought to himself. This is going to be exciting. 4 As Freddie looked through the glass, it took him a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. He could see that a patient was laying on the operating table, covered with blue sheets. A doctor or nurse was standing near the patient, and another doctor or nurse was hunched over a computer a few feet away. No one was actually touching the patient. Instead, a large complicated machine with three mechanical arms was standing over the patient. From where he stood, it looked as though the ends of the three arms were inserted into the patient’s body. 5 “What’s going on?” Freddie asked Sanja. “What’s that machine doing?” 6 “That’s the new procedure,” Sanja told Freddie. “We use a surgical robot to perform minor surgery here. The surgical robot has three arms. One arm inserts a tiny camera into the patient’s body. The other two arms have instruments attached to them that perform the surgery.” 7 “Are you saying that a robot is performing surgery on that patient?” Freddie asked. 8 “Yes,” Sanja re