Doctors at AIIMS perform major robotic surgery

Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here performed a robot-assisted anterior pelvic exenteration on a 50-year-old woman suffering from cancer of urethra and urinary bladder recently.

Dr Y K Gupta, chief spokesperson for the prestigious hospital, said this kind of surgery was done for the first time in India by the Department of Urology at AIIMS.

"This was a major challenging surgery and required high-tech surgical skills," Dr Gupta, who is also head of the Department of Pharmacology at AIIMS, said.

The operation, conducted by a team headed by Dr P N Dogra, Professor and Head, Department of Urology, involved the removal of the urinary bladder, uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, anterior vaginal wall, urethra and pelvic lymph nodes, a statement from AIIMS said.

According to it, AIIMS has initiated a drive to maximize the use of the robot so that maximum number of patients can be benefited. Facilities and programmes are being developed to perform advanced robotic surgery on prostate, urinary bladder and kidney to offer state-of-the-art robotic surgical technology to patients suffering from various urological diseases.

Robotic surgery at AIIMS is being done on a regular basis and now its use has been extended in a wide spectrum of diseases in the field of urology and other specialities. The Department of Urology is developing a training programme in robotic surgery, including the virtual simulation system (RoSS – The Robotic Surgical Simulator) for imparting this skill to future robotic surgeons, the statement added.