ISLAMABAD, Sept. 27 (ONLINE): On her flight to Atlanta, Robin Pollack nibbled gummy bears and sipped a cranberry juice cocktail. It had been a week since she’d gotten robotic surgery to remove a cancerous stomach tumor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and she was heading home – feeling surprisingly good.
The surgery required five small cuts. “I now have four little dots and a 2-inch slit that he superglued shut,” Pollack said. “After surgery, I woke up hungry.”
She was out of bed and walking in a day, and out and about town with her husband within a week, enjoying crème brûlée and eggs Florentine.
“I have not had one bit of pain since,” she said 2 weeks after surgery. “I have not taken pain medication, not even one Tylenol. I walked 2 miles yesterday.”
A better post-operative quality of life is one perk of robotic surgery, said surgical oncologist Naruhiko Ikoma, MD, who performed Pollack’s procedure.
There are pluses for the surgeon, as well. “I feel more precise in terms of dissection and in suturing,” said Ikoma. “In conventional open operations, surgeons use instruments. … In robotic surgery, surgeons feel like they’re operating with their own fingers with precise tips.”
Look to the Future: Clinical Trials
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Look to the Future: Clinical Trials
There are a lot of mistaken beliefs out there about clinical trials, but they may actually be the key to treating cancer.
Robotic surgery, or robot-assisted surgery, is more than 20 years old, but experts believe it is now poised for growth. Propelling the technology forward are the very advantages that Pollack and Ikoma describe: improved accuracy, shorter recovery times, and less pain.
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