Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld spoke to Dr Imran Hamzawala, Robotic & laparoscopic Surgeon, Gynaecologist & Gynae-cancer Specialist, Saifee Hospital, Mumbai, to know more about the advancements in robotic surgery and the protocols attached to it.
Surgery to Robotics Surgery- Transition and advancements
Surgery has been a very integral part of medical practice over the years. Earlier there was only open surgery, the focus at the time when open surgery was the only option was to try and reduce the mortality which means to save the patient’s life, which was the focus of the doctors of that time. What then eventually transpired is that once we have done the life saving surgery as the surgeon have I actually made the patient’s life better, which is the biggest question that came up. So quality of life after reducing the morbidity of the patient became the focus, because any branch of medicine needs to go through a process of evolution to improve itself for the betterment of mankind.
When laparoscopy came in people thought this technology will never fly, and just another gimmick, open surgery is the way forward and that is what people thought. In 2020, to even think of doing a surgery which is not laparoscopic is something you can’t think about because patients come to you and ask if this will be done with minimally invasive approach.
When robotic surgery is controlled 100 percent by the doctor, it helps the doctors do a more precise job as it has a 10 times magnified vision of any organ that you are looking through robotic surgery. The second more important bit is that the tip of the instruments move, which wasn’t possible with conventional laparoscopic surgery so you can get into areas which were difficult, quite easily with robotic surgery.
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The whole idea is to take the problem out with the least possible collateral damage and if there is a technology that allows you to do that then it ought to be embraced. India have very much warmed up to the idea of doing robotic surgery so it is my strong belief that if you combine modern technology with good skills and good team work there are very good chances of achieving patient outcome and that is what we all should be striving for.
Now even single port robotic surgery has been invented which means doing the entire surgery with just one cut and that is how we are progressing in surgical practice. I think we should progress in surgical practise for the betterment of surgical practice and that is exactly where the world is going.
Robotic Surgery: Protocol and Guidelines
As a part of me being a senior resident I was involved in a robotic surgical programme at a hospital in the National Health Service in the UK. It is incredibly important to follow the guidelines and why these exist, so that the errors that may happen are minimised. When we started with robotic surgery in the US, there were new guildelines that were put in place: There should be trained robotics surgical nurse. There should be a dedicated technician available at the time of surgery. The robotic anaesthetist needs to be specific who knows how the anaethesia needs to be given at that time and so on.
Multi-Speciality Robotic Surgery at Saifee Hospital
Saifee Hospital really takes pride in being one of the centres in India which does multispeciality robotic surgery. Robotic surgery is spearheaded by a group of consultant surgeons which are urologists because prostate cancer is a cancer which is best dealt with robotic surgery as it is the gold standard. At Saifee we have trans-oral robotic for base tongue tumour, excision for tonsillar tumours, we do radical neck dissection robotically, we have also done episiotomies, Wipples for pancreatic cancer, colectomy operations and node dissections robotically.
All of these surgeries are done at Saifee Hospital and we take pride in ourselves in being one of those units which are a multispeciality. I have been involved in training the nurses. We have made sure that all these protocols and guidelines that have trickled down from the UK experience are incorporated at Saifee Hospital so that we create the best possible scenario for the surgical experience which translates into good patient outcomes.
Source: ET HealthWorld
