News of the first robotic gall bladder removal in Santa Cruz was announced in this press release:
Surgeon Jimmy Chung, MD, of Santa Cruz last week performed the first Single-SiteTM robotic surgery at Dominican Hospital, successfully removing a 53-year-old Scotts Valley woman’s gall bladder through a small incision in her belly button, an advanced technique that results in a faster recovery and virtually no scars associated with what used to be a major, invasive surgery.
The new Single-SiteTM suite of instruments and accessories of the da Vinci System's Remote Center Technology are designed to leapfrog even more modern laparoscopic techniques, avoiding the crowding of instruments inside the body that is commonly linked to hand-held, laparoscopic single-incision devices. The surgical robotics company says the technology aims to make patients healthier on the inside and better looking on the outside while getting them back to their lives faster.
“Single site robotic surgery has great potential to revolutionize the way we perform minimally invasive surgeries,” says Dr. Chung. “Eventually, we should be able to perform almost all laparoscopic surgeries through a single incision, saving the patient unnecessary scars and pain.”
Dominican Hospital was the first on the Central Coast to purchase a da Vinci Surgical System, having performed hundreds of procedures since summer of 2008. Alongside the most experienced team in the area, surgeons at Dominican use the robotic platform to perform urologic, gynecologic, oncologic and general surgical procedures.
Currently, Dr. Chung is the only doctor on the Central Coast trained to perform Single-SiteTM da Vinci gallbladder surgery. For more information on Dominican’s daVinci program, visit dominicanhospital.org.
