McALLEN — Nine-year-old Pepe Cabeza de Vaca IV squared his shoulders Monday afternoon as he sat down at the console of South Texas Health System McAllen’s da Vinci 5 Robotic Surgical System.
Recently acquired, the $2.5 million precision machine is the second-of-its-kind at the hospital, on display Monday to show the public what it can do.
Cabeza de Vaca touched a pair of handheld controls and a few feet to his left, a pair of robotic arms capped with small forceps came to life at a mock surgery table that looked a bit like a ring toss game at a carnival, miniature rubber bands laying around a set of small multicolored plastic prongs.
Cabeza de Vaca’s goal was to string a rubber band twisted into a figure eight across two of the plastic protrusions.
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Matt Wilson
Reporter
Matt Wilson is a Hidalgo County–based freelance reporter and contributor to the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal. He previously covered education and general assignment for The Monitor, frequently writing about the dramatic ways business changed during the coronavirus pandemic. Before that he worked as a reporter in rural Central Texas where he covered everything from house fires to school board meetings.
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