Wellness Wednesday is sponsored by Intermountain Health.
What are you best at? Would you say you’ve done that thing 100 times? 500? How about 1,000?
There are now surgeons in Utah who have performed more than 1,000 robotic surgeries. Today we look at the advancing role of robots in the surgery suite.
“It's basically robotic assisted surgery, the surgeons are performing the surgery, but the robots are helping assist.”
An important distinction. Robotic surgery is about enhancing the surgeon’s senses and precision. For example, their vision.
“The camera that we use is 10x magnification has two lenses, one for your right eye, one for your left eye, so you kind of get a 3D view inside.”
Dr. Richard Mattern is Chief of Surgery at LDS Hospital, and he’s now performed well over 1,000 surgeries using robotics.
“Yesterday, I did a partial nephrectomy on a patient where we cut part of the bottom part of their kidney off where there was a tumor and left the remaining part of the kidney behind, and we just clamped off the blood supply, cut the tumor out, sewed the kidney back together and unclamped and he went home yesterday afternoon after the surgery,” said Mattern.
Before robotics, the patient would have been in the hospital at least overnight, often longer. And the technology keeps improving.
For example, Mattern said, “We have 3d models that we've started using that also help you know, identify structures and kind of know, you know, what you're getting into.”
Mattern can use new 3-D imaging to see what’s happening inside his patient. It helps his patients understand what’s happening and helps him plan the most effective intervention.
“Sometimes on the imaging, you know, we can say, hey, it looks like it's up against a blood vessel, I don't think we're going to be able to do this safely. And then we get the models, and we can see a little sliver of tissue between, you know, the tumor and blood vessels, and we can say, hey, you know, what, I think we can try this. So, I think it's allowing us to, you know, to do more, not risky surgery, but maybe more, you know, technically advanced or difficult surgeries, and be able to perform those and do some organ preservation,” said Mattern.
Dr. Mattern is one of six surgeons in the Intermountain Health System who has performed over 1-thousand robotic assisted surgeries.
Done back-to-back without breaks, 1-thousand surgeries would take each of the surgeons almost two months to perform.
