SGH now equipped with latest da Vinci surgical system
KUCHING: Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) is poised to have a very exciting time ahead in the next 10 years with roboticassisted laparoscopic surgery after acquiring the latest da Vinci surgical system.
Head and senior consultant urologist Dr Teh Guan Chou said while robotic surgery is not new in SGH, the fourth generation da Vinci XI system has a host of advantages for both patients and surgeons.
“Advantages for patients include improved surgical outcomes, less blood loss, reduced transfusion rate, improved surgical margin, and less pain.
“Patients can also return to active life earlier, with a shorter hospital stay, which in turn would reduce congestion in the hospital,” he told reporters in a media briefing and tour yesterday.
Patients will be given the choice whether they want the conventional or robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery.
As for surgeons, Dr Teh said one of the key advantages of the robotic system is improved access to organs that are difficult to reach during surgery.
“It is also more ergonomic with a stable operating platform, especially during long and complex surgeries. It also enables surgeon autonomy as the camera lens, retraction and dissection are all controlled from the surgical console.
“Surgeons can also operate on more cases in a day with the system, in comparison to open surgery where they can only operate on one case a day,” he said.
Dr Teh informed SGH has formed a robotic multi-speciality team two days ago.
“We have a training programme and implementation programme to move forward so we can make this hospital the centre of training and hopefully the centre of excellence for robotic surgery in the Ministry of Health (MoH) hospitals.
“We are training the surgeons in stages,” he said.
He said that since the system costing RM11 million, arrived at SGH a month ago and they have performed four cases so far.
“We target to operate on 100 cases per year, or two cases per week,” he added.
According to Dr Teh, the first generation of da Vinci system was brought to SGH in 2008 from Johor Bahru.
“That was when we started robotic surgery in this hospital, particularly for urology and small cases in general surgery and gynaecology.
“We could not continue the service after 2018 because of difficulties in procuring fund. We are fortunate as for the last few years, we have been working hard to convince MoH to reinstall the programme and now we have managed to acquire this fantastic machine; the fourth generation.
“So we jumped from the first generation to the fourth generation. SGH is currently one of the two hospitals in Malaysia to have this XI model, the other being Sunway Medical Centre,” he said, adding that Malaysia now has a total of seven hospitals with the da Vinci surgical system.
Dr Teh noted that technology has evolved over the past 20 years, thus the fourth generation da Vinci system and instruments are vastly different from the previous ones.
“It has an upgraded vision system that provides a crystal clear 3D HD vision with 10-time magnification, and also an 8mm endoscope with an upgraded image sensor.
“There are four universal arms on the boom-mounted patient cart for better range of motion, among others,” he said.
Also present during the briefing was SGH director Dr Ngian Hie Ung.