Surgeons Do First Near-Weightless Surgery

[eridani]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=2499486

Braving queasy stomachs, a team of French doctors took to the skies Wednesday for the first operation on a human being in zero-gravity conditions, removing a cyst from the arm of a man as the aircraft soared and dived to create weightlessness.

The five-man medical team made history by slicing off the yellow growth that floated away from the patient, tied to a string. Doctors worked in intervals of 22 seconds during conditions of weightlessness. Coincidentally, it took 22 intervals to complete the surgery.

The operation, more than three years in the making and part of a three-phase exploration of weightless surgery, paves the way toward one day performing surgery in space via a surgeon or a remotely controlled robot. It also is an experiment that