New Technologies

DOCS' Rx: ROBOTICS; Da Vinci surgical system a new masterpiece;

Jessica Heslam. Boston Herald. Boston, Mass.: Jun 26, 2005. pg. 007

Robots already vacuum our homes, build our cars and fly our planes.

Now, they're helping doctors perform life-saving surgeries at Hub hospitals.

Surgeons at Boston Medical Center - the latest Bay State hospital to acquire one of the nearly $1.3 million robots - are doing more and more heart surgeries and prostate removals using the 1,400- pound da Vinci surgical system, which is made by California-based Intuitive Surgical.

Boston Medical Center's urology department has done 16 surgeries using the robot this year, most of them prostate removals.

Dr. Richard Shemin, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at BMC, has done a dozen heart surgeries using the robot, including four mitral valve repairs and eight coronary artery bypasses.

"This gives me views of the heart that I've never seen before," said Shemin, who plans to do 30 to 40 more robotic surgeries by year's end. "It allows me to do my surgery better."

Here's how it works:

The patient lies on the operating table beneath the robot's three surgical arms. The surgeon sits a few feet away at a comfortable consoleand peers through a camera that gives him a 3-dimensional view of the person's insides.

The doctor uses foot pedals to move the robot arms and focus the camera. The control panel also has thumb and finger controls that allow the doctor to operate the tiny instruments attached to the robot's arms. The robot cuts and stitches, duplicating the surgeon's moves.

Shemin said the robot gives him greater precision, while the camera, which magnifies by a power of 10, allows him to "see better than I've ever seen before."

Added Dr. Richard Babayan, chairman of urology at BMC: "In the time that we've had the robot, I've learned more about the anatomy of the prostate because I can see it better than I ever saw it during open surgery."

For patients, robotic surgery means less blood loss, pain and scarring. It also means shorter hospital stays and faster recovery.

That's because cyber-surgery allows doctors to operate through small incisions, instead of breaking sternums and slicing open abdomens.

The instruments enter the body through the incisions and allow for greater control than laparoscopies, the usual method for prostate removal.

Babayan said the robot allows doctors to rotate instruments 360 degrees and bend them at angles not "humanly possible" in traditional surgeries. The robot also eliminates hand tremors, a welcome improvement in any operating room.

"The robot is a slave to the surgeon," Babayan said. "The robot doesn't do anything. It's the surgeon who makes the robot go through its moves."

The robotic prostate removal shaves one to two days off a patient's hospital stay and three to four weeks off recovery time. That's good news to cost-conscious hospital officials. Ditto insurance companies, which happily pick up the additional $3,000 cost of using the robot.

In Boston, a growing number of patients are requesting robotic surgery, doctors say. Harold Grassel, 68, of Franklin, was working within three days of having his prostate removed using the robot in March.

Said Grassel: "I wanted to get better quickly."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

People: Shemin, Richard, Babayan, Richard

Section: NEWS

ISSN/ISBN: 07385854

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