Northwest Health System recently announced the establishment of the Northwest Robotic Surgery Institute, culminating several years of physician efforts and staff education necessary to establish this high-tech program.
“Robotic surgery is a minimally invasive approach in which we operate laparoscopically through small incisions, and the instruments we insert into those incisions are attached to a robot,” said Dr. Anthony Woodruff.
Surgeons control the robot from a console next to the operating table. The console provides unique technological advantages such as 3-D vision, 10x magnification and instrumentation that is much smaller and offers greater mobility than the human wrist and conventional laparoscopic instruments.
“A surgeon using the robot with two hands can actually use four to five instruments at one time, which are additional technological advantages that only the robot offers,” Woodruff said.
Woodruff chose urology as a subspecialty area because he wanted to surgically treat cancer and knew the field was on the cutting edge of technology.
“I was already doing laparoscopic surgeries without the aid of the robot and got excited about it because of the advantages the robot offered over what I was already doing,” he said. “The range of motion was beyond what my wrist could do and I was able to work with a variety of instruments while using only two hands.”
He was recruited to Northwest Arkansas to help develop the robotic program by Drs. Chad Brekelbaum, Nirmal Kilambi and Michael Wilson, all with Northwest Arkansas Urology Associates.
Brekelbaum took the lead in getting the robot to Northwest Health System and Northwest Arkansas.
He was also the first surgeon to utilize the robot nearly four years ago and the first to do the robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy and a renal reconstructive procedure known as pyeloplasty.
Woodruff came to Northwest Health System with a vision to develop a center offering technologically advanced care from the best trained robotic surgeons.
In March 2009, he became medical director of the robotics program at Northwest Medical Center-Springdale. He led the process of assembling and training dedicated teams of caregivers, including pre-operative and surgical teams, recovery room teams and post-operative nursing teams who understand the robot and how to take care of robotic-surgery patients throughout their stay in the hospital.
The program expanded a year ago with the arrival of fellowship-trained gynecologic oncologist Dr. Joseph Ivy of Ivy Cancer Care. Robotic surgeries are now available to patients with cancer of the prostate, bladder, kidney, testicles, female pelvic floor, uterus, ovaries and cervix.
Using the robot, Woodruff is the first surgeon in Arkansas to perform:
• Robotic subtotal prostatectomy, or the removal
of a benign tumor from the prostate to allow the
male patient to urinate.
• Robotic removal of the bladder and prostate in
a man.
Dr. Robert Zimmerman of Benton County Urology was first to do a robotic-assisted partial nephrectomy, or removal of a tumor on the kidney while leaving the healthy portion of the organ intact.
Ivy was the first in the area to perform:
• Robotic removal of the uterus for benign or
malignant tumors arising from the uterus or cervix.
• Robotic removal of lymph nodes associated with
malignant tumors arising from women’s
reproductive organs.
• Robotic removal of ovarian remnants, pelvic or
ovarian cysts, and other complex pelvic surgery
in women.
• Robotic removal and treatment of cancers
arising from women’s reproductive organs.
• Robotic surgery to remove the uterus, cervix,
and/or ovaries in women with a complex
abdominal surgical history that may not allow for
traditional laparoscopy.
“I’m excited to bring advanced gynecologic oncology surgery options to women in Northwest Arkansas,” Ivy said. “I perform robot-assisted surgery for almost all for my procedures — including cervical, endometrial and early-stage ovarian cancer — but I also operate on women with complex benign medical issues.”
Additionally, the Little Rock native whose office is at Willow Creek Women’s Hospital in Johnson performs hysterectomies using the robot.
Ivy’s fellowship training helps him to conduct more precise, safer surgeries.
“I trained on the robot for three years during my gynecologic oncology fellowship,” Ivy said. “I have found the robotic technology so useful that I have received further training to become certified in not only performing robotic surgeries, but also teaching these highly advanced surgeries to other physicians.”
Generally, patients who undergo robotic surgery spend only a night or two in the hospital and resume normal daily activities quickly because incisions are smaller, less blood is lost and not as much tissue is disturbed.
“As the first robotics institute in the state of Arkansas, we continue to press the envelope and remain current with this revolutionary new technology, which is helping many patients in the community,” Woodruff said.
Leave a Comment