Conoce las ventajas de la cirugía robótica en Urología
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What is robotic surgery in Urology?
Robotic surgery is nothing more than the application of a tool, which is a robot, a device that allows us to do surgery in a more precise way. The robot is called da Vinci and what helps us is to make a very non-invasive surgery and yet with great precision, it allows us to use tweezers, scissors, 8 mm inside the patient's abdomen cavity and to be able to remove the pathology that we have to remove, tumors if it is prostate, or kidney, and preserve what we have to preserve and therefore, that does not affect the function of the organ that we have operated. For example, that there is no incontinence or that there are no erection problems.
In what operations is used?
We use robotic surgery in Urology in any intervention that is needed to enter the abdominal cavity. For example, we use it a lot for prostate cancer, it is perhaps the most common indication, the most frequent. But we also use it for nephrectomy. Nephrectomy, especially partial, when we have to remove a part of the kidney, a part of the kidney that has a tumor. We also use it when you have to remove the bladder, and rebuild a new bladder with bowel. That really through laparoscopy is practically impossible to do, with robotic surgery we can do it. Therefore it has many applications in urology, but as I say, the most frequent is the operation of prostate cancer, radical prostatectomy , because it allows, doing a very precise surgery, that patients do not have the consequences that often occur after radical prostatectomy, which are mainly incontinence, which has a serious impact on the quality of life of men, and erectile dysfunction is also a common problem and also affects the quality of life of men and their partners , of their families.
What advantages do you have regarding other techniques?
Robotic surgery has many advantages. Fundamentally what we do is to make a very little invasive surgery, that is, through small incisions that allow us to place inside trocars, it allows us to make a very precise surgery. Fundamentally, robotic surgery gives us the ability to see in 3 dimensions, have an enlargement of the image, therefore it is as if we had the eyes very close to where the problem is that we have to operate. It allows us to have an enormous mobility of scissors and tweezers, and therefore allows us to do a very precise surgery. In short, there are a series of technical advantages, a series of advantages that this tool, robotics, helps us to do a surgery in which we have better results fundamentally.
What is your treatment and follow-up?
Incontinence and erectile dysfunction are indeed the two most common complications that appear after radical prostatectomy, the operation for prostate cancer. It really is much less frequent when we use robotics, but sometimes there are also these kinds of problems and we can find a small percentage of men who have mostly erectile dysfunction. Older men, men with worse preoperative erectile function, those with cardiovascular risk factors such as having smoked or having high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, or diabetes, are more likely to have erection problems after the surgery.
In those cases we also have solutions, not only for incontinence, we can use incontinence meshes very similar to those used in women but specifically for men. The mesh is really a minimally invasive surgery, but artificial urinary sphincters can also be placed, we have a great experience in artificial urinary sphincter, a surgery that must be done by someone who has experience in it because the possibility of complications is high. Erectile dysfunction is treated initially, as everyone may know, with medication, pills, Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, or other medications that may be useful for this problem. In many cases this medication is not responded to and it is necessary to resort, or to intracavernous injections, the patient has to prick himself in the penis a medicine to have an erection, or finally we resort to the implant of a prosthesis, a treatment that is also enormously effective, that the patients are very happy and well, logically their partners too, and with whom we have a great experience and it is a very effective treatment.
