Holy Cross Hospital was the first hospital in Montgomery County to offer da Vinci robotic surgery. Robotic surgery doesn’t mean robots are scrubbing up and operating on patients. Human physicians are still in charge. But they are using robots as tools.

With da Vinci robotic surgery, the surgeon makes small incisions, through which he or she inserts long, narrow surgical instruments and a tiny video, instead of making large cuts to expose the area being treated. The camera shows an image of the surgical site on a video screen, which the surgeon monitors while performing the procedure.

Robotic surgery uses small instruments and a camera in much the same way as laparoscopic surgery.

But instead of the surgeon holding the instruments, robot arms hold them. Using the da Vinci system, the surgeon remains in complete control of the procedure without ever touching the patient’s body. The robot seamlessly replicates the surgeon’s hand, wrist and finger movements into precise real-time movements of surgical instruments inside the patient. The robot uses the instruments to cut and suture (sew) just as a human surgeon would but with greater precision.

At the heart of the da Vinci system are two high-resolution fiberoptic cameras that produce a true, 3-D, color picture to help surgeons better view the surgical area, which is critical when performing delicate procedures.

Using da Vinci, surgeons can undertake even more radical procedures in a way that creates much less tissue trauma, and patients can often be out of the hospital the very same day.

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