Robots enable hospital surgeons to carry out even more life-saving ops
A specialist cancer hospital in Surrey - which treats patients from Horsham and Crawley - has become the first in the UK to carry out three simultaneous operations using robots.
Surgeons at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford carried out three major urological ops at the same time using surgical robots to enable vital cancer treatments to continue at speed while the nation recovers from the Covid pandemic.
The teams used the cutting-edge technology to perform two bladder removal operations and a rectal operation using the Da Vinci robots in neighbouring theares.
Three separate teams of nine surgical staff each worked side-by-side throughout the day to complete the operations.
A spokesman for the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust said:“These surgical robots are predominantly used for cancer surgeries and benefits for patients can include reduced trauma to the operating site, thanks to the miniature instruments of the robots, fewer complications, less blood loss and faster recovery times.
“The robots also allow surgeons to have a better view of the surgery, thanks to their high definition, threedimensional cameras.”
As a specialist cancer centre, Royal Surrey is the only NHS Trust in England to benefit from having four of these machines on one site.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, teams completed around 600 robotic surgeries for patients with cancer and other serious conditions in 2020.
Clinical director of urology at the trust Matthew Perry led the three surgeries. He said: “The future has arrived.
“Computer assisted surgery will become the norm and we’re really proud to have the capacity to organise and perform this many life-saving minimally invasive surgeries for the benefit of our patients.
“We often schedule two robotic operations at the same time but decided to undertake this triple surgery when it became apparent that we had another priority patient who needed immediate surgery.
“We would urge anyone with potential cancer symptoms to continue to seek out clinical advice during the pandemic. We will continue to do our best for our patients.”