HONOLULU -- They don't just come out for Halloween; Tripler Army Medical Center's robot surgery section remains on the cutting edge of surgical treatments.
The Center has been using the Da Vinci Robot Surgical System for a number of years. Within the last year, the Center acquired the latest model of the Da Vinci Surgical System.
This equipment is comparable to what is used in any larger hospital or Medical Center in the mainland or around the globe.
This state-of-the-art robotic surgical equipment is used for performing routine and complex surgery.
The robotics has allowed surgeons to perform minimally invasive surgery that ultimately translates into quicker recovery time, less scarring in patients and better quality of life.
Unlike traditional surgery, where a an operating room staff hovers around the surgery table, during 'robotic' surgical procedures, the surgeon sits at a console and looks through a 3-dimensional viewfinder at a high definition 3-D image of the patient.
As the surgeon maneuvers the controls, the robot translates the movement of the hand into precise movements of tiny instruments inside the body.
Without this equipment, accessing certain body parts can be very difficult.
LTC Jay Schuster, a Tripler Registered Nurse and Perioperative Nursing Consultant to The Army Surgeon General, works with the robotic equipment daily and has seen the technology evolve through the years.
"This is really a proprietary system that allows for greater enhanced access to areas that human hands can't actually get to; so it has improved articulation and improved perspective that allows for more complicated procedures that would take a longer period of time or require enhanced dissection," Schuster explained. "It is a much more user friendly system with better articulation that can do far, far, far better, than anything the human hand can anatomically do -- so 360 on 360, a circle in a circle," he added.
With Tripler's focus on quality care for patients, the robot-advantage is not for surgeons alone.
Just as important, if not more so, are the advantages for patients. The minimally invasive surgery option eliminates the possibility of large scars.
In fact, most procedures for patients are performed through just a few small incisions, about 1-2 cm in diameter.
Most open surgeries would require much longer incisions which translate to longer recovery times.
"Take for example a patient with throat cancer. To access the tumor would require a long incision through the jaw and throat and perhaps even a break in the jawbone, causing possible disfigurement, difficulty eating, speaking and swallowing," said Schuster. "Using the Da Vinci, small area surgery such as throat surgery is much easier to perform. The arms of the Da Vinci allow an entire 360 degree articulation which your wrist just can't do. After making that entire circle, the Da Vinci can then make another circle…so a circle in a circle. The human wrist is not capable of making that kind of maneuver," he added.
One of the most important messages to beneficiaries deciding upon surgical care is that you no longer have to look to mainland clinics or go out of Tripler's treatment system for their specialty surgery; patients can have it all done at TAMC.
"The state-of-the-art technologies that are available to you downtown are also available to you here. We have the latest and the greatest. So if you are a qualifying beneficiary we can do it here," said Schuster. "We have some of the highest numbers of trained surgeons here and we span all the services from obstetrics to oncology, ear-nose-throat, general surgery, bariatrics and geriatrics," he added.
The Center is performing two or more surgeries a day using the Da Vinci Robot but more are expected.
The Center is also a training environment where young residents have an opportunity to learn the technology and use it alongside the physician.
Almost like taking a driver test, the physician can put the brakes on any wrong move a resident may make while learning the technology.
"20 years ago gall bladder and splenectomies were all open procedures. Nowadays it would be unusual to see an open surgery (at TAMC). It's becoming the new norm," Schuster said.
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