The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has used robotic cancer surgery for the first time in Victoria, Australia.
The da Vinci S HD surgical system was implemented in the facility last year and to date, operations on 39 cancer patients have been carried out using the system, out of which three patients had rectal cancer, 31 had prostate cancer, and five patients had kidney cancer. The robotic procedure was first carried out on John Manca, a cancer patient. The robotic procedures in the treatment of cancer are highly beneficial as they ensure a speedier recovery process. In several cases the patients are usually discharged from the hospital immediately on the next day itself.
da Vinci S HD surgical system
According to Declan Murphy, the Director of Robotic Surgery Associate Professor, in traditional open surgeries for prostate cancer, patients would have to stay in the hospital for at least six or seven days, and to get back to their normal routines it would take around six to twelve weeks. He reveals that the robotic cancer surgery was being used extensively in localized prostate cancer and that the hospital was looking forward to expanding the robotic program even further for surgeries involving head, chest, neck, gynecological and abdomen.
Peter Mac being the sole Australian Public Hospital dedicated to cancer is also a national and international leading facility for translational, clinical and laboratory research.