An Albany hospital is celebrating advancements in surgical techniques.
St. Peter’s Heath Partners marked both National Robotics Week and the 20th anniversary of its robotic surgery program with a robotics day of discovery Wednesday.
Speaking next to a da Vinci V robot, with four robotic arms able to perform minimally invasive surgery, Saint Peter's Hospital Acute Care Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nick Montalto says the new technology is safer for both practitioners and patients.
“It allows us to do very minimally invasive surgeries through very small incisions with very fast recoveries for patients that were that is really a tremendous advance,” Montalto said. “The ability to see in three dimensions, the ability to actually feel tissue and the manipulation of the instruments is something that has not existed before,” Montalto said.
Montalto says the level of precision possible through modern robotic surgery machines is unmatched.
“Instead of the equivalent of looking at a television screen, now you see as if you're in the body. And so that visualization lets you see blood vessels that are so small you never would have been able to see them before. You see actual capillaries,” Montalto said.
To operate the da Vinci V, surgeons use a stationary headset that displays an image of the operating field. Loops attached to the surgeon's fingers can independently operate each of the robot's four arms. To demonstrate the machine's precision, an operator uses tiny pinchers to lift and rotate a penny. On a large screen, our 16th president sits in his chair inside the Lincoln Memorial.
Sue Friedlander, who was visiting her mother in the hospital, stopped by the demonstration to give the machine a whirl. After undergoing minimally invasive surgery a decade ago, she was impressed with the advanced technology on display.
“Well, I have to admit I’m not one to play video games, but it really was a lot of fun, and you can see how much easier this makes it for the surgeon,” Friedlander said.
The hospital demonstration was packed with small children. Local Pre-K students from Saint Peter's Mercy Cares for Kids program were invited to take a look.
St. Peter's Director of Surgery Jeffrey Stone says robotic surgery makes the medical profession accessible to the next generation, who might already have some related experience.
“We're seeing people who grow up playing video games much more, much more comfortable at the table and at the console, because it's something that they're familiar with. This robot has biofeedback, so when you pull on it, you feel the tug through the through the machine, whereas the older robots, you don't necessarily feel that,” Stone said.
St. Peter's owns seven robotic surgery machines, and uses them for its general surgery, urology, bariatric, gynecologic, thoracic, colorectal and hepatobiliary specialties.
