KUWAIT CITY, Oct 23: The Ministry of Health announced the provision of the latest class of Da Vinci Xi robot devices at the Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Kidney and Urology Center and the first radical prostatectomy operation for a cancer patient. In this regard, Head of the Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Nephrology and Urology Center Dr. Saad Al- Dousari explained that the Sabah Al-Ahmad Nephrology and Urology Center performed the first robotic operations at the same time - one with the world’s most modern Da Vinci Xi robot for radical prostatectomy, and the second with the Da Vinci Xi robot for radical nephrectomy. The two patients recovered and were discharged from the center the next day after the surgery.

The robot is used in multiple surgical specialties, but urology is one of the specialties that most uses this technology in the world. Studies have proven the robot’s usefulness in operations on organs located in the pelvic area, as it is a deep and narrow area and requires precise hands such as robot hands. There is an increase in the number of robotic devices at the Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Nephrology and Urinary Tract, in order to ensure that the Ministry of Health employs the latest technologies used in performing surgical operations, specifically artificial intelligence techniques.

More than 1,500 major surgical operations have been performed in the center using surgical robots since 2014. It included many cases such as radical resection of the prostate, radical resection of the bladder, radical resection of the kidney, removal of a tumor from the kidney, correction of a congenital defect in the kidney pelvis, and other major operations. Dr. Al-Dousari said surgery using the Da Vinci robot is characterized by less pain after the operation, because the operation using it does not require making large incisions and wounds as in open operations, in addition to the fact that the hospital stay period is short compared to open operations, in addition to the fact that the rate of bleeding during the operation is less.

He explained that what distinguishes the robot from a regular laparoscope is that the vision is perfect, because it is 10 times magnified and three-dimensional, which allows the surgeon to see better than open operations. In addition, the robot’s hands have extreme precision because they contain joints that enable them to rotate like a human hand, which allows for sewing to less than a millimeter, using the smallest types of needles and threads.

One of the benefits of the robot is also to filter out hand tremors during the operation, which facilitates the surgeon’s work and reduces the rate of complications. Dr. Al-Dousari said studies have proven that surgical operations using robots are safe, and that more than 5 million operations using robots have been performed worldwide, adding that the robot has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a technology used to perform surgical operations by surgeons who have received certified training in its use.

By Marwa Al-Bahrawi
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff