Robotic surgery helps treat kidney transplant patient with cancer

Mumbai, July 18: Doctors at the Saifee Hospital here successfully conducted robotic kidney cancer surgery on a patient who had previously undergone a kidney transplant, the hospital said on Tuesday.

The patient, who had undergone a kidney transplant surgery over five years ago, was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour in one of the failed kidneys.

In a surgery, that lasted a mere 40 minutes, doctors at Saifee Hospital removed the cancer-infected kidney without any damage to the functional transplanted kidney.

"Robotic surgery has grown to become the pinnacle of precision for surgical treatments related to kidney cancer or prostate cancer across the world as it significantly reduces blood loss, pain and invasiveness as compared to open surgery and ensures faster recovery and better long term results," Anup Ramani, Uro-Oncological Robotic Surgeon and Director (Minimally Invasive Surgery) at the hospital, said in a statement.

"Since, the patient had a rare uro-oncological condition, in which the transplanted kidney was in close proximity to the cancerous kidney, the robotically assisted surgery allowed us to remove the cancerous kidney with as much precision. There was no blood loss and the patient was discharged within three days of surgery," Ramani added.

Robotic surgery ensures minimum blood loss, minimum pain and minimum hospital stay. The robotically assisted system also allows the surgeon a three-dimensional view of organs such as kidney and prostate by magnifying the image to 12 times the size visible to the naked eye.

Furthermore, due to 360-degree movement of robotic arms, robotic surgery is the most precise, minimally invasive and necessary approach for a critical surgery of this kind.