Prostate cancer affects hundreds of thousands of American men every year while 21st Century medicine continues to evolve. This medical evolution has given rise to robotic-assisted surgeries such as a prostatectomy.
Systems such as Intuitive Medical’s da Vinci® Robot have been successful in reconstructing urinary tracts and in treating cancers and other conditions of the prostate, kidneys, and bladder.
Robotic systems allow for a minimally invasive procedure that utilizes a three-dimensional view in order to allow surgeons to perform complex urologic surgeries. The benefits of a robotic-assisted prostatectomy include the use of smaller incisions, higher degrees of accuracy, shorter hospital stays, and faster patient recoveries.
The robotic optic systems utilize a stereoscopic camera that provides a magnified view to enhance the doctor’s perspective inside the body. Specialized instruments, alongside the robotic optic systems, provide the surgeon with superior dexterity.
During a robotic-assisted prostatectomy, the surgeon precisely manipulates robotic arms to remove the cancerous prostate using a three-dimensional video system along with specialized hand controls and real-time feedback.
Because of the minimally invasive nature of the procedure, patients generally report less pain and post-operative bleeding and a faster recovery time. From the physician’s perspective, there is a decreased risk of damaging vital nerves around the prostate when using robotic-assisted technologies.
Robotic training has widely become an integral component of urological residency. Specialists learn to operate these systems as part of their medical training. Urologists are beginning to use robotic systems to assist in a wide variety of procedures that remove cancers and other malignancies from a patient’s urologic system.
It is also important to note that physicians do not relinquish control during a robotic-assisted prostatectomy. The doctor is in complete control of the procedure at all times and the mechanical apparatus is simply another tool used to facilitate the surgical goals with a smaller margin of error.
Medicine is changing at a great velocity in order to meet the needs of an ever advancing populace. Robotically-assisted procedures are yet another example of how medical science is evolving to meet the needs of its patients.
