Neighborhood Notes

You'll read about first here, folks...

Soon to be in the press, Good Sam hospital has recently dropped a cool 7 figures on a new DaVinci Robot, to assist with surgical procedures in Urology initially, followed by Gynecology and Cardiac Surgery.

St Vincent's Hospital has had a DaVinci robot for several years now, but the use of robotics has increased enough in the community to warrant this installation. Not to mention, Legacy wants to compete with Providence in the technology war.

Robotics have been used extensively in urology and have started to become gold standard for prostate cancer surgery. The idea is less invasive surgery, less blood loss, and fast recovery. If you know anyone needing a radical prostate surgery, I highly recommend they see one of the surgeons trained to use this approach (feel free to email me for names).

In Gynecology, the uses of the robot are mainly for complicated infertility surgery such as fallopian tube reversals (after having the "tubes tied"), removal of fibroids from the uterus in women wanting to preserve fertility, and for complex endometriosis. There are only a couple Gynecologists in Oregon using the robot at this time, but soon more docs will be trained.
The heart surgeons have also used the robot for valve surgery and removal of the thymus gland.

Good Sam bought the "S" series... no joke, just like in autos, this one has more bells and whistles than the robot at St Vincent's.
So let the battle of the robots begin !


If you want to learn more about robotics, I recommend visiting the Davinci website

http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/patientresources/index.aspx
or
http://www.pearlwomenscenter.com/downloads/oregonian.pdf

Have a great week !

Dr Rick