Opera with four arms and with a precision that are the envy at the best luminary of the operating room. Hospital bag arrived yesterday the "Da Vinci S" the first robot surgeon owned by a public hospital in Lombardy. The device, which currently represents the most advanced system on the market for robotic surgery, has already been tried in the OPS of Urology and, today, also will be available to the ENT Clinic and the Obstetric and Gynecologic Clinic. In practice, among many other possibilities, will work with prostate cancer, larynx and uterine. But how does the robot? Nothing devilish, it's all very simple: there are four arms included in laparoscopy (a technique that allows it to operate without "open" abdomen) in the patient's body, connected to a console command before which the surgeon is seated. That has to do that maneuver the robot's arms with two handles. It looks like a video game, actually works with precision. The instruments operated by the machine have negligible size (3-4 mm) and allow to exploit the techniques of minimally invasive surgery. The advantages, says Gabor Franco, Head of the Unit of Urology at the Sacco and "investigator" of this technology after nearly eighty operations are different, "Minor bleeding, pain almost absent, a hospital stay of four days against average Classic a week and, above all, a quick return to everyday activities. " An example: In patients operated on for prostate cancer, seventy percent recovered continence after a month, Ninety percent after one year. In addition, compared to traditional laparoscopy, "allow a three-dimensional vision and greater statiticità. In short, the robot has a steady hand and compared to traditional "closed-air" moves to 360 degrees, as in an operation to open abdomen. The disadvantages? "In the beginning is not easy to get familiar, because it is less tactile sense, but it's only a matter of habit." The price of all this technology, then, is not great: a kind of gadgets cost a million six hundred thousand euro, financed by Pirellone. Not only that, any work done with the "Da Vinci" costs € 2,500 to the hospital. For this operation will be entrusted to the robot in a year, no more than 150 selected cases, depending on need and urgency. The costs, however high, however, will be amortized by sharing instrument between the various hospital departments. Of these surgical
machines, in Lombardy there are already, in addition to Sacco, four: the Niguarda Hospital in St. Joseph, European Institute of Oncology, San Raffaele. But the bag is the only public buildings to purchasing it. Italy is the second country in the world after the United States, for used because with 32 prototypes. For the City Councillor for Health Gianpaolo Landi di Chiavenna attention to robotic surgery "makes Milan a center of eccelleza health and medicine," especially emphasizes the prof. Emilio Trabucchi, director of Onco-Surgery Department of Gastroenterology-bag, "with regard to improving the quality of life of patients. And in this sense, the Lombardy Region is one that ensures the best services for less. "
