WATCH | National Park Medical Center in Hot Springs celebrates 100th robotic surgery with Da Vinci system | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

WATCH | National Park Medical Center in Hot Springs celebrates 100th robotic surgery with Da Vinci system | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

HOT SPRINGS — National Park Medical Center recently celebrated the 100th surgery completed with its newest robotic surgical system, approximately eight months after the first surgery was completed.

The 100th surgery was performed in August, but the hospital held its celebration earlier this month.

“We started doing procedures with the Da Vinci in January,” Shelli Ross, the hospital’s director of surgical services, said. “In August we completed our 100th Da Vinci procedure. We’ve exceeded that by now, it is cutting-edge technology. We’re happy to offer that service to the Hot Springs community.”

Ross said robotic surgery “is the future.”

“Once upon a time, whenever I was a very young nurse, laparoscopic surgery was the new thing, and now laparoscopic is becoming the older-style surgery, and we’re going toward robotics,” she said.

“We’re very fortunate to have Dr. (Mandy) Rice here with us leading the charge. Dr. Pittman Moore is one of the GYN surgeons that has done hysterectomies with us. It offers our patients less pain, less complications, and it’s just a great service for our Hot Springs community,” Ross said.

Rice uses the Da Vinci system almost exclusively now.

“The Da Vinci system is the latest and greatest for our surgery technique, as far as the tools that we can use to be able to access the patients’ abdomen and pelvis, also the chest cavity, for our thoracic surgery counterparts, and be able to do maximally invasive surgery — whatever needs to happen in the different body cavities that we’re in — but only using very small incisions,” Rice said.

“So the patients (are) experiencing less pain because it’s less of a wound in their abdomen or chest cavity, so they’re recovering faster. They’re having less complications in the operating room and out of the operating room, getting back to their normal lives faster,” she said.

Surgeons also see a benefit from using the system for their procedures, Rice said.

“One of the great things about this is we have the ability to have ourselves in ergonomic correctness,” she said.

“When we’re doing long procedures, I’m able to stay upright and not hurt my neck or my back.

“My neck is in alignment. My back is in alignment. Instead of those years and years of bending over a patient’s table and having our necks malaligned and our backs malaligned and our knees pressing up against the metal bed,” Rice said.

“Now it’s so much different. Just strictly from a surgeon’s standpoint, it’s so much healthier. I can work longer during the day. I can work longer, hopefully, in my career.”

Jessica Pitts, a certified surgical first assistant who has participated in several surgeries with the new system, agreed.

“It’s a lot different than just the laparoscopy case because it’s more demanding on our body to stand up and do a laparoscopy,” she said.

“So using the Da Vinci, it’s easier on the surgeon, obviously. It’s easier on me as an assistant.I don’t have to hold a camera for six hours. So it’s nice because these little arms do what they need to do. Surgeon sits at the console, and all I have to do is change out arms at their request,” Pitts said.

While laparoscopic surgery is similar, Rice said the robotic system is much more maneuverable and offers better care.

“It’s taking the idea of small incisions in laparoscopy, but really taking it into a much more advanced realm,” she said.

The new system is more “finessed” and gives surgeons a better range of motion and view of what they are doing.

“With a visibility that’s super close that’s just not so possible when you’re dealing with the old technology that the laparoscopic camera is or in open surgery where you’re standing over the patient,” she said.

“So this allows us to be truly just centimeters from the anatomy of question because of the viewfinder we have that’s 3D, high definition, bright light, and we can allow our very small camera to get super close to the anatomy in question.”

The better range of motion also allows the surgeon to work in more difficult areas than is possible with laparoscopy.

“That allows us to get into very small spaces,” Rice said. “I can work up underneath the liver, where I’m at with the gallbladder, and I’m working in a very tiny space. My instruments are so small that I can be really up tight to that small, small area and see everything very clearly while having much less risk of injuries to the tissues around it or even the tissues I’m working on.”

Jason Fryar, the hospital’s clinical and robotics coordinator, said while this specific system is new to the hospital, robotic surgery is not.

“Everybody seems really on board with it,” he said.

“They trust the technology.It’s been around for a little bit. It’s been proven. It’s by no means an experimental technology. Just general perception that people have of robotics in general, the precision that robotics brings, not just in the medical industry, but in every industry, robotics is incredibly precise, repeatable,” Fryar said.

“It seems to give patients a sense of security they may not have had otherwise completely giving up control to strangers.”

  photo  Jessica Pitts, a surgical first assistant at National Park Medical Center, discusses the benefits of the Da Vinci robotic surgical system. (The Sentinel-Record/James Leigh)
 
 
  photo  Dr. Mandy Rice, left, a surgeon at National Park Medical Center, moves the Da Vinci robotic surgical system into place for a demonstration as Jason Fryar, the hospital’s clinical and robotic coordinator, looks on. (The Sentinel-Record/James Leigh)
 
 

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