Facing traditional open surgery to treat disorders in the chest cavity can be a frightening experience. Open thoracic surgery requires making large incisions through the chest wall and between the ribs. In addition, open procedures often mean longer hospital stays and extended recovery periods.
In some cases, Mercy Medical Group Thoracic Surgeon
Stephen Maxwell, MD, is able to use the da Vinci® Surgical System to treat lung cancers, remove mediastinal tumors and most recently to treat GERD and other disorders of the foregut.
Because surgeries performed using the da Vinci robotic system are minimally-invasive and use small incisions, patients spend less time in the hospital recovering with less scarring. Additionally, for complex cases, open surgery may not be an option, making da Vinci a viable choice and surgical treatment a possibility. Enhanced viewing and instrumentation offers more precision, reducing collateral tissue trauma, errors and infections.
For most patients, minimally invasive thoracic procedures performed with the da Vinci® Surgical System can offer numerous benefits over open-chest surgery.
Potential benefits may include:
