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07.12.2018 14:44:54
At the Salzkammergut-Klinikum Vöcklabruck Hospital Michael Dunzinger, Head of Department of Urology, has been operating with the da Vinci robotic surgical system for three years. The editorial staff attended one of such operations.
Michael Dunzinger, head of the department, sits in the well-cooled operating room of the Salzkammergut-Klinikums Vöcklabruck Hospital and controls the high-tech device, the da Vinci robot, like a musician playing the organ, setting in motion his whole body. A urologist needs both hands and feet for work.
The patient lying on the operating table today is being removed a diseased prostate. “The cancer is not aggressive, the chances of a happy outcome are high,” says Dunzinger and directs the instruments directly to the diseased organ the size of a nut. On the screen it looks a lot larger. It is enough to make one or two incisions in the patient’s body to introduce the four arms of the robot. Each “arm” is a microsurgical instrument that can be set in motion like a hand. A small camera transmits the image of what is happening inside the body in high resolution. The surgeon can examine it in real time with a 15-fold magnification.
The surgery is difficult as because of the previous biopsies there are many adhesions on the prostate. This means strain for the entire surgical team. Eventually, they manage to remove the organ without damaging the surrounding structures, such as the bladder, the urethra and the spermatic cords.
The patient is in a deep sleep during the operation. After the operation he gets rid of the prostate cancer. “Potency and the control of urination have been preserved,” says Dunzinger. At the Salzkammergut-Klinikum Vöcklabruck Hospital about 200 surgeries are performed with the da Vinci robotic surgical system, primarily for prostate, kidney, bladder, uterine and ovarian cancers.
By using the high-tech device from the United States, in Upper Austria they perform surgeries in such hospitals as Ordensklinikum Barmherzige Schwestern and Ordensklinikum Elisabethinen Linz (for ten years already) and in the Klinikum Wels-Grieskirchen Hospital for seven years.
“As you can see, a well-trained surgeon can move the arms of the robot with the joysticks and control the camera with the foot treadles,” explains Tilman Konigswieser, Chief Physician at the Salzkammergut-Klinikums Hospital. This gives precision to a millimeter and freedom of motion, “which can never be achieved performing minimally invasive interventions with human hands.”
Other advantages of the robotic surgery are that patients lose less blood, their recovery period is reduced, and the surgeon sits at the control panel in a relaxed state instead of performing the operation in an uncomfortable position.
For the head of the department Dunzinger and Karl Lehner, a member of the board of Gesundheits-Holding GmbH, the da Vinci means a continuous development of minimally invasive surgery. “In the USA approximately 90% of urological surgeries are performed with its help.”
