Portneuf invites community members to try new robotic surgical system

Portneuf Medical Center invited the community try out and learn about the hospital’s newest robotic surgical system on Monday.

Dozens of community members, of all ages, sat down in the surgeon’s chair and got to play around with the hospital’s new $2.3 million toy.

“People love it and they go and get in the robot and they’re like wow,” Dr. Jorge De Amorim Filho said.

Some of those who were playing with the robot will likely end up being operated on by that same machine.

“The way I look at is, not only could they have them operating on them, but there’s probably some of the kids here who in the future might operate on me on those machines,” Dr. Drew McRoberts said.

With a machine that costs more than most area homes, you’d think the hospital would be worried about having so many untrained people play around on it. But according to Dr. McRoberts, the machine protects itself.

“It has so many safety features built into it that they can’t hurt the robot, because it won’t allow itself to be hurt.”

Now with two da Vinci machines, the hospital plans to get more surgeries done in a shorter span.

“The biggest thing is, we were running into significant scheduling problems with our current one robot and so now we should have less of that,” McRoberts said.

In addition to being able to handle a higher number of cases, the new machine allows the surgeons to also take on a broader spectrum of surgeries.

“Specifically, more complicated abdominal wall cases and even colon cancer cases, upper GI, in terms of stomach surgery, we can do all that because we are able to move the patient with the robot and we have a little bit more mobility and we get better access,” Dr. Jorge explained.

Even with the heightened abilities of the new machine, there are still procedures that Portneuf isn’t yet performing.

Currently, almost all the cases are elective surgeries, but McRoberts believes that nearly half of all surgeries will be performed with the machines in the near future.

“We are not yet using it for urgent or emergent operations, although, it’s definitely being done in some of the bigger centers in the United States.”

The new machine was first put to use last Wednesday and has already handled several cases. According to McRoberts, the first patient was very excited to take part in the robot’s inaugural procedure.

Portneuf currently records all of its cases for “compliance and liability” purposes and soon some of that footage may be making its way online.

“We are actually trying to develop, now, a YouTube channel with our own cases so that our patients can see what we do in the operating room and they will understand,” Dr. Jorge said.

“We can talk to them a lot about, ‘hey we’re gonna do this robotically’ and they are not quite aware of what that entails.”

The series is still in its developmental phase, but the hospital said it plans to have videos posted in the new few months.