OU Medicine setting the standard in modern-day surgery

With the recent addition of robotic spine surgery, OU Medicine is leading health care in the state with its advanced robotic and minimally invasive surgery options. OU Medicine has more surgical robots and physicians trained to use them than any health system in Oklahoma.

This is changing surgery as patients know it and educating physicians on cutting-edge surgical techniques that result in less pain, shorter hospital stays and quicker recovery times. And, patients can be comforted knowing OU Medicine has been safely caring for patients with emergency or critical needs during this pandemic. With adequate personal protective equipment and masking supplies in stock, widespread and quick turnaround testing available in-house, and new protocols in place, ongoing safety can be ensured.

“Robotic surgery provides patients an opportunity to return to their lives sooner,” said Michael Cookson, M.D., director of the Robotic Surgery Program at OU Medicine and chair of the Department of Urology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, OU Medicine’s academic partner. “The Robotic Surgery Program at OU Medicine gives Oklahomans across the state a wide range of surgical options for a variety of procedures ranging from simple hernia repairs to complex urological, gastrointestinal and gynecological cancer cases.”

OU Medicine physicians perform robotic-assisted surgeries at OU Medical Center, The Children’s Hospital and OU Medical Center Edmond. These physicians represent more specialties than anywhere else in the state, including colorectal, gastrointestinal, gynecology, head and neck, neurologic, thoracic prostate and urologic surgeries — such as prostate and bladder — and other general and oncologic areas. The Children’s Hospital has the state’s only robotic device dedicated solely to pediatric general and urologic surgeries.

Many hospitals offer robotic surgery, but statistics show that outcomes are better if the surgery is performed by experienced surgeons. OU Medicine physicians are equipped with unparalleled robotic expertise and advanced technology. For that reason, OU Medicine recruited a fellowship-trained neurosurgeon who specializes in minimally invasive and complex spine surgery to become the first health care system in Oklahoma to offer robotic spine surgery. Zachary A. Smith, M.D. recently joined the Department of Neurosurgery and has taken a key role in the robotic spine surgery team at OU Medicine.

“The capacity to perform robotic spine surgery is another advance in the level of care available to Oklahomans and patients in the surrounding region,” said Ian Dunn, M.D., chair of the Department of Neurosurgery. “This technology improves safety in the operating room and enhances patient outcomes. Our combined neurosurgery and orthopedic spine team will drive this innovation in the state.”

Robotic surgery is a form of minimally invasive surgery that integrates 3-D high-definition video with mechanical arms and a computer. Skilled surgeons are able to guide tools to access hard-to-reach areas of the body using a viewing screen and special tools. Robotic technology allows a surgeon’s hand movements to be translated into smaller, more precise actions using tiny instruments during surgery.

More than 40 OU Medicine surgeons operate regularly with robotic technology. Benefits of robotic surgery include smaller incisions, less scarring, reduced blood loss, fewer complications, reduced chance of infection, less pain, less need for pain medication and ultimately, shorter hospital stays.

Not only does OU Medicine lead the state in advanced robotic and minimally invasive surgery, but OU Medicine physicians took part in national research to establish minimally invasive surgery as a standard of care for certain diseases.

Stephenson Cancer Center gynecologic oncologist Joan Walker, M.D., led a multi-center study that determined a minimally invasive approach to endometrial cancer surgery provides better outcomes, including reduction in pain, hospital stay, reduction in complications and improved quality of life, than the traditional standard of care did at the time.The use of robotic surgery allows physicians to translate these improvements into more complex surgeries, where laparoscopy can be challenging, so that fewer hysterectomies are requiring abdominal incisions. These practice-changing study results were published in November 2009, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a high-impact oncology journal.

Dr. Cookson was also part of a multi-center randomized trial that established robotic cystectomy as a standard treatment for patients with invasive bladder cancer published in the Lancet in June 2018. OU performs more bladder removals than other hospitals in the state and more than half are performed robotically. Furthermore, Dr. Sanjay Patel and colleagues have perfected techniques for robot bladder replacement.

Additionally, OU Medicine trains the state’s future surgeons for robotic surgery through an extensive training lab for this advanced skill set.

This article is sponsored by OU Medicine.