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St. Elizabeth's Upgrades Robotic Surgery Unit
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Gerald Brown of New Castle, Pa., knows firsthand the benefits of robot-assisted surgery. A diabetic, Brown, who retired just a few months ago from St. Elizabeth Health Center after working in maintenance for 38 years, had surgery for prostate cancer.
“It was just four small incisions,” he recalled. “After my surgery I was able to work for another five years here.”
Brown, who was the first patient to undergo robot-assisted surgery at St. Elizabeth when the hospital launched the service in 2007, joined hospital officials Thursday forf the grand reopening of the robotic surgery center there. The newly renovated unit, located on the top floor of the hospital, is designed to accommodate anticipated growth in the robotic surgery program.
The renovation of the unit cost about $125,000 and follows the $2.5 million investment this spring to buy a new da Vinci surgical system for the center and to introduce robot-assisted surgery at St. Joseph Health Center in Warren.
“Robotic surgery allows us to perform very complicated surgeries but with very small incisions and so the benefit to the patient is there is much less blood loss, much less [time for] recovery,” said Daniel J. Ricchiuti, M.D., director of minimally invasive and robotic surgery at St. Elizabeth.
The new da Vinci robot has greater capabilities and allows surgeons to do further things, said Kelly Varie, robotic surgery coordinator. The robot provides surgeons with 3-D vision and permits them to monitor vitals from the bottom of the screen without having to look away from the field, she said.
“It’s a significant upgrade,” Ricchiuti said.
Since 2007, 893 procedures have been performed at St. Elizabeth using robotic surgery, hospital officials noted.
While it occupies one of the hospital’s oldest wings, the robotic surgery center nursing unit looks “absolutely new, modern and up to date,” said Don Koenig, vice president of operations for Humility of Mary Health Partners, which operates St. Elizabeth and St. Joseph health centers.
“It’s mostly private rooms,” which the hospital is in the process of implementing, Koenig added. “Our goal is to have the whole hospital looking like this unit in a few years,” he said.
Koenig noted that U.S. News and World Report, which ranked St. Elizabeth as the No. 7 hospital in Ohio and No. 3 in Northeast Ohio, cited the hospital’s use of the latest technology particularly in the areas of urology and gynecologic surgery, both mainstays of the hospital’s robotic surgery program.
The health center has taken a “comprehensive approach,” not just bringing in the specialized equipment and putting it in the operating room, Ricchiuti said. St. Elizabeth put together “a great team of people in the operating room,” in the recovery process and in preadmission testing. “Everybody’s been in on this and it’s been a great approach, and this new unit is a great example of that,” he said.
Staff on the unit has gone through “extensive training,” Ricchiuti continued. “This is very expensive, very technical equipment that they need to learn how to operate from A to Z,” he said.
Nurses who completed the specialized training to work on the unit were awarded pins recognizing the robotic certification at the media event.
That training included watching Ricchiuti meet with patients in his office to explain the procedure to them and observing the robot during procedures, along with classes, said Chris Windt, a registered nurse.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.