Doctors at the Zydus hospital in Ahmedabad performed a unique robotic-assisted surgery to save a 68-year-old cancer patient. The surgery called ‘Whipple procedure’ was done with the help of one of the best robotic-assisted surgery systems, da Vinci Xi made by US-based Intuitive. This is the first time a Whipple procedure was performed with the help of a surgical robot in Gujarat. 

This patient, who is a mathematics professor from Bihar, was diagnosed with a periampullary tumour. After doing a pre-operative workup, the doctors at Zydus decided to go for minimally invasive robotic surgery. Though this operation lasted for 10 hours, the patient had a very good post-operative recovery, and he started taking food in 2 days and got discharged from the hospital within 6 days.

Dr. Bhavin Patel, who lead this procedure, said, “Whipple’s is a very complex operation, mainly performed to remove pancreatic cancer. Traditionally this operation is performed by open surgery with large incisions of 15-20 cms over the abdomen, and it comes with a lot of post-surgical complications such as infection and leakage. As we are making large incisions, it will require a high amount of blood transfusion, as well. But, now with advanced surgical technologies like da Vinci Xi, we had an option to do it through a minimally invasive method.”

“Da Vinci Xi robotic surgical system is a great help for surgeons. It provides great 3D vision and ergonomic instrumentation which gives very much precision during surgery,” Dr. Patel added.