Goodbye, flop period!
Prostate most cancers is the commonest most cancers amongst males within the US, apart from pores and skin most cancers. About 13% of male People will get it — and remedy typically comes with the danger of erectile dysfunction.
Aid is coming — the world’s first dual-robotic surgical procedure to take away a prostate gland was carried out final month in Texas. This groundbreaking method goals to protect the nerves that management erectile operate.
“We have now a magnetic know-how that permits higher retraction of the tissues and higher visualization,” Dr. Alberto Rodriguez-Navarro, founder and CEO of Levita Magnetics, instructed The Submit.
“Within the case of the prostate, this may consequence within the surgeon higher seeing the nerve bundles,” Rodriguez-Navarro continued. “The nerves are essential as a result of they’re associated to incontinence, like urinary incontinence, and in addition sexual operate, so preserving these nerves is vital.”
Dr. Jeffrey Cadeddu used the da Vinci single port robotic system and Levita’s MARS platform collectively for the primary time to take away the prostate of a 67-year-old man with Stage 2 prostate most cancers at UT Southwestern Medical Middle.
The twin methodology reduces the variety of incisions, resulting in much less ache, fewer problems, quicker restoration and fewer scars.
“Applied sciences which are made by completely different firms are normally not made to work collectively … however we are able to work collectively, which is what was cool about it,” mentioned Cadeddu, a urologist, professor and member of Levita’s medical advisory board.
In a robotic prostatectomy, a urologist makes 5 or six small incisions within the decrease abdomen space to insert miniature surgical instruments and a digital camera to entry and take away the prostate gland.
The da Vinci single port, launched within the US in 2018 by Intuitive Surgical, requires just one small incision as a result of the digital camera and three devices are grouped in a single shaft.
The one-arm design — which Cadeddu likens to an octopus — permits for larger vary of movement and minimizes collisions between devices.
The da Vinci gives deep and slim entry to tissue, whereas the MARS system makes use of magnetic forces for exact tissue retraction and manipulation of inside organs.
An exterior magnet on the affected person’s pores and skin controls a magnetic grasper contained in the physique.
“The precise slicing out of the prostate is finished by the [da Vinci] robotic, however the manipulation of adjoining tissues is finished by the MARS magnetic robotic,” Cadeddu defined. “Marrying the 2 in a single operation — two robots, one controlling the grasper, one controlling the scissors and the dissection by the surgeon — that’s the novelty.”
MARS, launched in 2023, has been utilized independently for weight reduction surgical procedures, gallbladder removals and colorectal procedures.
The plan is to make use of the twin know-how in surgical procedures past prostate elimination and to broaden to different places. Rodriguez-Navarro hopes to implement the method in New York hospitals this 12 months.
“We’re simply beginning,” he mentioned. “The concept is that we put this within the arms of all of the surgeons within the US and in addition on a worldwide scale.”