Mar 3 2011
Most Hospitals primarily use robotically assisted surgery in either gynecology or urology. However, the Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital are making use of robotically assisted surgery in thoracic surgeries, Whipple procedure for pancreatic Surgery, head & neck cancers and colorectal cancers.
These Washington University Surgeons are utilizing robots for minimally invasive procedures for treating colorectal and prostate cancer, pelvic floor repair, kidney tumor removal and also on procedures on the stomach and the esophagus.
Dr. Traves Crabtree, MD, a surgeon at Barnes-Jewish who has been using this technology to remove certain lung tumors remarked that the aim was to determine if robots could provide finer details for performing the operation. The fine movements performed by the robot would help the surgeons to carry out the procedures in a more efficient manner now but in the future it could help them in highly complex procedures.
Instead of major incisions used in traditional open surgeries, the robotically assisted surgery technology would permit a few small incisions while two of the robot’s arms would hold the surgical instruments and a third arm would hold a camera, which would allow a surgeon who is sitting in front of a computer console close by to see inside the body. Michael Awad, MD, PhD, a minimally invasive surgeon at Barnes-Jewish, performed his first robotically assisted general surgery in 2009 on the stomach and the esophagus, and he states that the robot could easily perform even difficult cases laparascopically.
The treatment of cancers using robot technology is being investigated by the lead investigators in controlled and randomized trial conditions. Barnes-Jewish Hospital has been using the da Vinci surgical system, which is robotic surgery technology from 2007 while the Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital started using it in 2010.
Source: http://www.barnesjewish.org