On August 31, operating room #39 hosted the first procedure at Brigham and Women's Hospital performed with the da Vinci surgical system—a surgical robot manipulated remotely by the surgeon using three-dimensional images as a guide. BWH is the only hospital in New England and one of only five in the country to host and operate a surgical robot of this kind.
In order to make this possible, BWH OR staff, including nurses, physicians and surgical technicians all had to complete extensive
training.
“I was honored to be asked to participate in the training and application of the system,” said DeLois Carson, RN, staff nurse, General Surgery.
Carson, surgical technicians and Cardiac Surgery nurses who will soon be using the daVinci system were required to take part in two days of training at the manufacturer’s headquarters in California in addition to on-site training at BWH.
Since the first procedure, a gallbladder removal, BWH has performed a handful more procedures using surgical robotics, the next major advancement in minimally invasive surgery (MIS), which adds a third dimension of imaging to current two dimensional laparoscopic MIS.
“The futuristic nature of the da Vinci system is amazing—it’s quite extraordinary being part of the first of BWH’s surgical robotics procedures,” said Carson.
“Things are going very smoothly in the robotics cases for those of us involved in the sterilization, preparation and operation of the machine. Like when other new equipment is introduced into the OR, every case gets easier as more are performed,” she added.
Seated at a console apart from the operating table, the surgeon remotely controls the robot using 3-D images of the surgical field inside the patient. Meanwhile, assisting surgeons, nurses including Carson, and surgical technicians monitor the surgeon’s progress on a two-dimensional screen and changing various instruments on the robot needed for different phases of the surgery.
“The da Vinci surgical system has the potential to revolutionize MIS at BWH,” said Chief of Cardiac Surgery Lawrence Cohn, MD, who originally recognized the potential benefits of this innovative system in cardiac surgery and was responsible for bringing the cutting edge da Vinci system to BWH. “Cardiac surgery and other specialties will be further improved by this system,” he added.