This is a monthly update on the growth of Robotic Surgery in my practice.
Original blog entry about robotic surgery growth was in November of this year and was updated in December.
For December, I performed 13 robotic operations including 9 prostate removals for cancer, 1 kidney removal for a kidney that was causing pain and was enlarged about 20 times normal and did not work, as well as removing 2 parts of kidneys for cancer.
The highlights for December were:
Dec 19th- I performed what I thought would be one of my most difficult robotic prostatectomies. The gentleman had a severe infection in the past from perforated diverticulitis and and had 2 major colon surgeries. In addition to his prostate cancer, he was left with an incarcerated ventral hernia.
In less than 3 1/2 hours, Dr. Adam Kopelan (Millburn Surgical) and I fixed his hernia and removed his prostate with clean margins. He went home the following day and only took 1 pain pill at home. He told me that it was more for his knee than prostate or hernia surgery.
Dec 19th- We performed our 2nd robotic anterior exenteration and what I think is the worlds first for urethral cancer. This took us about 4 1/2 hours and that included a small incision for the urinary diversion. The details of this can be found at a previous blog entry.
Dec 20th- I performed 2 robotic partial nephrectomies. One patient went home the following day and one patient in 2 days. Both of these were for cancer and had clean margins. This was the 5th operation of this type performed in NJ and all by my robotic team.
Dec 27th- Dr Galdieri and I performed 3 robotic prostatectomy operations in less than 10 hours. This was all done in 1 room and with 1 anesthesiologist and the the same nursing team. This is as much a credit to my anesthesiologist, assistant, nursing team, and all employees involved as it is for myself.
For the year we performed 79 robotic operations and 59 robotic prostatectomies, with a large portion of these the last 3 months.
