WP2.10 - The Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Surgery Free

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionised many industries, especially in the field of medicine. However, its application in medical surgery has been limited.

Our study aims to review current literature surrounding AI’s use in surgery and identify potential future application of this new technology. We look at the preoperative, intra-operative, and postoperative phases of a patient’s surgical journey and see how AI can improve each component.

A selective literature review was conducted by gathering 19 relevant research papers of interest related to AI in surgery. These studies were collected from PubMed and papers only published from the past 5 years were included. Of the 19 papers 11 were included in the final review.

This review reveals numerous applications of AI in surgery, primarily showcasing its accuracy in preoperative patient data analysis with high sensitivities of 89%. Secondly intra-operatively AI can provide guidance through supervised machine learning and computer vision with accuracies as high as 95%. Finally, postoperatively AI has been shown to have a high accuracy at preoperative prediction of surgical site readmission rates, diabetes remission and personalised weight loss trajectories.

The findings of this review demonstrate the transformative ability of AI on various stages of the surgical journey. While demonstrating significant promise, challenges such as ethical considerations and regulatory frameworks need to be addressed to ensure responsible and safe integration. The new advancements shown in AI provide the foundation for future research into the technology.