Robot-Assisted Prostate Surgery
next day. Yes, there were a few more days of
rest and simple exercising, but I was soon doing
daily hikes with my wife.
Final Thoughts
In a demonstration, engineering and post-grad computer science students at Johns
I am indebted to my surgeon, Dr. Michael Lipke (a
urologist with Kaiser Permanente), who endured my
incessant medical and technical questions, and did a great
surgery for me, as well as the many nurses,
anesthesiologist, assistant surgeon, and other caregivers at
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland. I would
also like to thank Providence St. Vincent for allowing more
than 60 photographs to be taken during my operation. I
appreciate all of the help that Intuitive Surgical gave to me,
and steering me to the right people. This was a most
unique and educational experience for me. SV
FIGURE 14. Endo Wrist needle driver. FIGURE 16. A basic suture procedure.
that he/she must use, such as needle drivers, forceps,
scissors, and many others. Figure 13 shows a close-up
view of my three Endo Wrist instrument’s ‘working’ ends.
Figure 14 shows a close-up view of a needle driver
Endo Wrist. Figure 15 shows a small assortment of the
different types of Endo Wrist instruments available. Notice
how the cables are attached to the different end
instruments. Each new instrument is attached to the robot’s
arm and inserted into the trocar which has a seal at the
bottom of the tube. Figure 16 shows a basic suturing
procedure under magnification.
My operation could have been accomplished by any of
the methods I talked about earlier. I preferred the da Vinci
robot-assisted surgery, mainly for the ability of my surgeon
to do the delicate procedures such as nerve sparing and
small suturing to allow me a quick recovery process. This
minimally invasive procedure allowed me to be up and
walking the afternoon of my surgery, and going home the
FIGURE 15. A small array of instruments.
80 SERVO 04.2012
