A robotic surgery facility was opened in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on Saturday.
Union Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the Robotic Facility. The Central government-run hospital is the first to start performing advanced medical robotic surgeries. It received the robot from the US last month, which has been a dedicated effort of the Union Health Ministry since the past four years. Finally, with the help of the robotic system costing Rs. 24 crore, the hospital has treated 25 patients suffering from prostate, kidney, bladder cancers, and advanced reconstructive surgeries till now.
While inaugurating the event, the Minister mentioned that this achievement makes Safdarjung the first government centre to start robotic kidney transplant in India. Also, he added that the hospital would be providing free treatment to all the patients and poor patients suffering from renal and urological diseases would not require waiting for a longer duration. Normally, private treatment for these procedures costs Rs. 5-6 lakhs which would be rendered free of cost to the poor population of India.
These surgical procedures performed with the help of a robot have several advantages. Robotic surgeries reduce the duration of the operation and the chances of error risk. A surgeon has to only manoeuvre the robotic arms using a command centre with a 3D screen that looks like a computer.
Professor and Head of Urology and Renal Transplant Department at Safdarjung Hospital, Dr Anup Kumar told about the benefits of the initiative. He stated that Robotics is the need of the hour. Such surgeries reduce the mortality and morbidity of patients with kidney failure patients and critically ill cancer patients.
He further added that this alternative would act as minimally invasive procedures and patients could easily avoid big skin incisions, blood loss, blood transfusion. Also, the surgeries would provide lesser pain, early recovery, and better functional and oncological outcomes.
The robot system is said to provide 7 degrees of freedom, 3-D vision, 10 times magnification, and better dissection with more precision. Suturing is much easier in complex reconstructive cases.
The system will be most useful for patients suffering from urology cancers like prostate, kidney, urinary bladder including renal transplant. CTVS and gynaecology surgeries will be performed using the robotics as well.
Robotic surgeries use three holes to perform. A camera is inserted from one hole to obtain a 3D vision and the other two holes help the surgeon to operate using instruments which are held by the robotic arms.
Safdarjung’s new super-speciality block with be having an all advanced infrastructure and will also be used as the National Robotic Training Centre to train young doctors.
The department will start international live webcast of the surgeries from next week. The hospital has conducted the first international live 3-D laparoscopic surgeries webcast under the E-Health online education programme of the Union Health Ministry, showing complex uro-oncology and reconstructive surgeries.
The programme scheduled to occur twice a month is connected with 52 medical colleges across India being the only such urology programme in India.
