Robots with scalpels

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Robots with scalpels
'BETTER WAY TO DO SURGERY' | UIC teaching its new docs less-invasive technology

June 17, 2008
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BY MONIFA THOMAS Health Reporter mjthomas@suntimes.com

Robotic surgery, no longer something out of a sci-fi novel, has become an increasingly popular way to do minimally invasive operations.

Surgeons at more than two dozen Illinois hospitals, including the University of Chicago Medical Center and Advocate Christ Medical Center, use the "da Vinci" robot to operate on the prostate, heart and other organs while sitting yards away from the operating table. About 85,000 robot-assisted surgeries were performed nationwide last year.
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Dr. Enrico Benedetti (rear) demonstrates the training center's da Vinci robot. Its tiny arms allow surgeons to use smaller incisions.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times)


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Robotic surgery training

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But the field of robotic surgery can only grow as fast as the number of surgeons trained to use the technology. Now, using a new, $2 million training center affiliated with the Walter Payton Liver Center, the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago will be the first Chicago area teaching hospital to train all of its surgical residents in robotic surgery.

"Until we train the next generation of surgeons to do this, we cannot meet the demand," said Dr. Enrico Benedetti, UIC's head of surgery. "At the end of the day, it's just a better way to do surgery."

Robotic surgery usually has a shorter recovery time, less blood loss and fewer post-surgical complications, with procedures done through a series of small cuts, rather than a large incision, Benedetti said.

The arms of the $1.5 million da Vinci robot also give surgeons more dexterity than instruments used for other minimally invasive techniques.

Surgeons at UIC used the robot to remove 60 percent of Charles Tongue's liver during a recent living-donor transplant. Recovery time is usually about two months, but, with the robotic procedure, Tongue said he was quickly back to normal.

"I'm glad I was able to get the robotics," the 53-year-old Rockford man said. "To me, it was just the way to go."

Most robotic procedures now are prostate removals. In the future, Benedetti said, he expects to see more surgeons using the da Vinci for heart-bypass surgery, lung surgery and "virtually any operation in the stomach or chest."

There's also the potential for Chicago doctors to perform surgery on patients in other cities, he said.

But not everyone is sold.

"Robots are operated by surgeons, and some of them are not very experienced," said Dr. William Catalona, a urologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Catalona said that the da Vinci robot, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000, "doesn't really have a track record" compared with traditional surgery.

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/1008954,CST-NWS-robotic17.article#
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