[December 03, 2008]

Look, no hands!: Surgical robot reduces pain and hospital stays, local doctors say

Dec 03, 2008 (The Paducah Sun - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
A new surgical robot at Western Baptist Hospital allows surgeons to use traditional skills with an advanced tool that lessens pain, hospital stays and time off work for patients.

The $1.7 million da Vinci Surgical System allows a surgeon to control a four-armed robot -- one arm with a camera, three with instruments -- while it's inside the patient to perform surgery. At Western Baptist, the first hospital in Kentucky west of Louisville to acquire the robot, it has been used to perform six hysterectomies, with the first prostate surgery scheduled later this month.

To operate the robot, the doctor sits at a control station in the operating room with his hands on the controls and foot pedals to switch control of the arms. The station has a viewer, which offers the doctor a close-up three-dimensional image, allowing him to control the arms inside the patient.

Dr. Blair Tolar, an obstetrician and gynecologist, performed the hysterectomies and said the robot makes surgery easier on both the patient and doctor.

"It has made traditional laproscopic procedures easier to perform," Tolar said. "From a technical standpoint, it's more like having your hands in the patient than laproscopic surgery because you're operating with your hands rather than at a control panel."

For patients, the robot allows surgeries that would have required large abdominal incisions to be performed instead with several tiny cuts, reducing pain and recovery time. Some surgeries involving large abdominal incisions can keep people off work for six to eight weeks, while the same surgery performed with the robot can cut that time to just a week or two, he said.

Tolar said because patients recover more quickly -- some hysterectomy patients could go home the day of the surgery -- the chances for complications related to long hospital stays, such as blood clots or pneumonia, are also reduced.

Tolar said the U.S. military developed the technology in the hopes it would allow doctors in faraway hospitals to operate on soldiers on the battlefield, but the distance technology couldn't be perfected. The company bought the technology and adapted it for civilian use, and Tolar said while it's mostly used for pelvic surgeries, it could expand to other types of surgeries.

Eventually, the technology could develop to perform surgeries at distance, he said. For example, in cases involving certain types of cancer, he could perform a hysterectomy in Paducah, then a gynecological oncologist in St. Louis or Louisville could continue the procedure almost seamlessly.

"This is a tremendous advancement in medicine," Tolar said. "Anytime a patient's pain or length of stay can be lessened while simultaneously improving a surgical outcome, that's quite an accomplishment."

Western Baptist will show off the robot to the public during the annual Holiday Health Extravaganza from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday in the atrium of the hospital's doctors office building 2. Free health screenings -- including cholesterol and blood sugar, blood pressure, EKG rhythm strip testing, and respiratory screenings -- will be available,

Information: 575-2918.
C.D. Bradley can be contacted at 575-8617.
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