SEBASTIAN — Armed with a piece of high-tech robotics, Sebastian River Medical Center aims to speed patient recovery time and ease post-operation pain.
Doctors at the hospital can now operate on patients with the help of the da Vinci Si Surgical System, a high-precision robot with better-than telescopic vision.
The hospital’s newest piece of equipment came with a price tag of just over $1 million, and it is the only one of its kind in Indian River County.
Sebastian Medical Center general surgeon Dr. Edward Murphy christened the machine, when he performed two colon resections with the help of four of the robot’s arms last month.
“It’s a privilege for me to be able to offer this state-of-the-art technology to residents of Indian River County at Sebastian River Medical Center,” Murphy said.
The hospital’s parent company, Health Management Associates, Inc., recently bought 10 of the da Vinci systems in an effort to bring smaller hospitals big institution capability.
“That’s a goal we have as a company, and we feel it is a unique goal,” said Christopher Booth, operating room director of Surgical Services at Sebastian River Medical Center. “There are smaller incisions (with da Vinci procedures), so your turnover time for getting out of the hospital is much quicker, you have a lot less pain, there are less instances of surgical infection.”
He explained the smaller the hole, the less the chances of getting an infection.
With da Vinci, incisions are made similar to laparoscopy (another minimally invasive surgery), but with even smaller incisions.
In the past, surgeons were limited by the size of their hands in what they can do. The zoom capacity of the da Vinci allows for micron-scale accuracy.
The machine knows to eliminate tiny movements caused by nerves. The robot provides a 3D view to a surgeon as if they were looking at their own hands.
The da Vinci system has been in use domestically for just over a decade, and has been common in larger cities for about five years, according to Hulecki.
“It has changed the way we look at doing some major operations – this is the future,” Hulecki said. “What we are going to see is rapid development of utilization. I can foresee us doing up to 200 cases with daVinci this year, and as it becomes more popular, people are going to ask for it. If your doctor doesn’t use the robot, people are going to say, ‘Well, can we use the robot?'” Hulecki added that by offering the da Vinci system at Sebastian River Medical Center, perhaps those patients who have migrated to Melbourne and other areas for the robot, will return closer to home. Sebastian River Medical Center’s Dr. Taryn Gallo, the hospital’s new gynecologist, performed over 100 operations with da Vinci as a fellow and resident at Yale. She claims da Vinci has a worth beyond its price tag, due to the quick recovery time.
“I see the number of minimally invasive surgeries increasing in older patients, obese patients, or patients with multiple medical problems,” Gallo said. “You don’t want to have them in the hospital for weeks because of a major surgery. A quick recovery is better for the patient, the hospital, the physician, and better for health care costs.”