Minimally invasive and robotic surgeries are trending in urology

Now a days, almost all kind of surgeries in urology (e.g. surgeries related to kidney, urinary bladder, prostate etc.) are being performed in Singapore by key hole approach or by robotic surgery for more precise and accurate surgical intervention, less blood loss, less pain faster recovery and shorter hospital stay. Dr Gerald Tan was sharing this recently with Star Health during his short visit in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Dr Gerald Tan is a Consultant Urologist and accredited Robotic Surgeon at Mount Elizabeth Hospital (Orchard & Novena campuses) with a keen interest in minimally invasive urologic surgery and urologic cancer therapies.

Now more gynaecologists are using robotic procedures to repair urine leakage or incontinent, which is common in women.

There are lot of usages of robotics, especially da Vinci® surgery. Although the cost of robotic surgery are higher due to sophisticated equipment, but patients are willing to pay due to the outcome of surgery. As a result the whole scenario is being changed day by day. Dr Tan thinks that within the next few years, robotic surgery will take over most of the procedures.

He mentioned the example of New York city where about 50 robots are operating, whereas in Singapore there are 6 robots operating in urological procedures. As it requires, technical expertise to operate the robotics, it requires time to develop and popularise.

Dr Tan informed that there was a benefit of training the junior doctors in robotic surgery. In conventional surgery, a surgeon needs hands on practice to learn the procedure; but in robotic surgery, many doctors can see the procedure at the same time. So more doctors can be trained if proper facilities are there. So doctors from foreign countries can also learn the procedure as they don't require to operate the patients.

For setting up the robotic surgery centre, it does not only matter the financial issues, but it matters mostly setting up the entire team for the procedure.