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 usually comes with the chance 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 strategy goals to protect the nerves that management erectile operate.
“We have a magnetic technology that enables better retraction of the tissues and better visualization,” Dr. Alberto Rodriguez-Navarro, founder and CEO of Levita Magnetics, advised The Put up.
“In the case of the prostate, this might result in the surgeon better seeing the nerve bundles,” Rodriguez-Navarro continued. “The nerves are very important because they are related to incontinence, like urinary incontinence, and also sexual function, so preserving those nerves is critical.”
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 Heart.
The twin methodology reduces the variety of incisions, resulting in much less ache, fewer issues, sooner restoration and fewer scars.
“Technologies that are made by different companies are usually not made to work together … but we can work together, which is what was cool about it,” stated 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 better vary of movement and minimizes collisions between devices.
The da Vinci supplies 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 actual cutting out of the prostate is done by the [da Vinci] robot, but the manipulation of adjacent tissues is done by the MARS magnetic robot,” Cadeddu defined. “Marrying the two in one 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 removing and to develop to different places. Rodriguez-Navarro hopes to implement the approach in New York hospitals this yr.
“We’re just starting,” he stated. “The idea is that we put this in the hands of all the surgeons in the US and also on a worldwide scale.”
