Italian technology in robotic-hand first (2)

(ANSA) - Rome, February 5 - A 45-year-old woman in Sweden has undergone surgery to permanently implant a robotic hand that she will be able to use on a daily basis in a world first, sources said Tuesday. The robotic hand was built thanks to the DeTOP European project led by Christian Cipriani of the Pisa Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna's Institute of Bio-robotics. Experts are working to prepare two more operations, in Italy and in Sweden, the sources said. The Swedish woman, whose right hand was amputated in 2002, is following a programme of rehabilitation to regain strength in the muscles of her forearm, which were weakened after the amputation, and, by using virtual reality, is learning to control the robotic hand, researchers and scientists told reporters on Tuesday.
    In the next few weeks, they said, she will be able to go home and use the new hand every day.
    "Thanks to this human-machine interface that is so accurate," Cipriani said, "and thanks to the skill and degree of sensitivity of the artificial hand, we expect that in the space of a few months the woman will regain motor and perceptive functions very similar to those of a natural hand".
    The surgical operation took place in Goethenburg, at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
    The operating surgeons were Richard Brånemark and Paolo Sassu. They implanted into the forearm (radius and ulna) of the woman titanium structures as a bridge between bones and nerve endings on the one side and the robotic hand on the other, the scientists said.