One of the exciting advances in minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery is the addition of robotics.
The “Da Vinci” is a robotic machine that allows the surgeon to perform advanced, minimally invasive, laparoscopic surgery with incredible precision.
Benefits For Patients?
Robotically assisted laparoscopic surgery provides many benefits to patients.
One of which is that it gives me, the surgeon, the tools to perform very intricate and complicated surgeries in a laparoscopic fashion.
Incredibly, a patient can have major pelvic surgery and end up with just three to four incisions on their abdomen that are each less than a half-inch.
More importantly than the incisions themselves, robotic surgery typically allows a patient to recover in a much quicker fashion.
What Are The Advantages Of Robotic Surgery For A Surgeon?
A major advantage of the robotic system to me as a surgeon is significantly increased dexterity and visualization.
I can take an area that’s two-by-two inches and expand it on a high-definition large screen in the operating room.
So I can see details that my naked eye simply cannot see.
The robotic arms themselves have higher dexterity than my wrist.
With robotic assistance, I can reach around corners and do things with a robotic arm that I couldn’t do if I had opened the patient and performed what’s called a laparotomy.
GYN surgery was instrumental in developing laparoscopy itself more than three decades ago.
The addition of robotics to laparoscopy allows us to do very complicated surgeries minimally invasive.
Dexterity, visualization, and technique have all gone to the next level.
