COLUMBIA, S.C. - Jim Bradford had a close encounter with a robot last year - and he's the better for it.
After he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, Bradford's surgeon removed the diseased organ with a little help from a reliable robot.
Robot-assisted surgery is a step forward in the field of minimally invasive surgery, in which doctors try to lessen the impact of surgery on patients by doing the same procedures through smaller openings in the skin.
Columbia resident Bradford had to go out of state - he picked Duke University - for his robotic prostatectomy last year. But now, patients like him have a place near home where they can get that and other kinds of robotic surgery done. Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia bought a "da Vinci" robot. The hospital also has recruited a new urologist, Dr. Terrence Chapman, who will get the robotic surgery program going. He has taken part in more than 100 robotic prostatectomies.
While robot-assisted surgery is used most commonly in urology, Palmetto Health surgeons will be using it in a variety of other areas, including cardiac, pediatric and gynecological surgery.
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Although robotic arms do the cutting, the doctor is in full control at all times. The machine cannot operate automatically or be preset.
Along with the robot standing over the patient, at least three people - the surgeon, a scrub nurse and an assistant - are involved in each robotic prostatectomy.
The surgeon controls the robot remotely from a console while watching a high-definition, highly magnified 3-D image of the area involved.
Attached to the robot's four arms are long-handled surgical instruments and a camera with a telescopic lens. The surgeon "drives" the arms using gear shifters and foot pedals, making surgical movements the robot mimics.
The wide range of motion of the robotic arms, and flexible "wrist" joints on surgical instruments, give doctors better access and control in tight spaces than do traditional rigid instruments.
The robot also reduces a surgeon's normal hand tremors and keeps movements steady regardless of the length of a surgery.
Robotic prostatectomy surgery doesn't take long - usually three to five hours. Bradford's took fewer than three hours, and he was out of the hospital in less than 24.
Comparisons between how patients survive after new surgical methods and traditional "gold-standard" ones usually are based on at least 10 years of data on patients. Such "survivability" data is not yet available for da Vinci robotic surgery, however, as it has been just six years since the FDA approved the procedure. ||?Page=003 Column=004 Loose,0049.09?||
