da Vinci Surgical System – Oral Cancer News

Incisionless robotic surgery offers promising outcomes for oropharyngeal cancer patients

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: press release, Henry Ford Health System A new study from researchers at Henry Ford Hospital finds an incisionless robotic surgery – done alone or in conjunction with chemotherapy or radiation – may offer oropharyngeal cancer patients good outcomes and survival, without significant pain and disfigurement. Patients with cancers of the base of tongue, tonsils, soft palate and pharynx who underwent TransOral Robotic Surgery, or TORS, as the first line of treatment experienced an average three-year survival from time of diagnosis. Most notably, the study's preliminary results reveal oropharyngeal cancer patients who are p16 negative – a marker for the human papilloma virus, or HPV, that affects how well cancer will respond to treatment – have good outcomes with TORS in combination with radiation and/or chemotherapy. "For non-surgical patients, several studies have shown that p16 positive throat cancers, or HPV- related throat cancers, have better survival and less recurrence than p16 negative throat cancers," says study lead author Tamer Ghanem, M.D., Ph.D., director of Head and Neck Oncology and Reconstructive Surgery Division in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital. "Within our study, patients treated with robotic surgery had excellent results and survival, irrespective of their p16 status." Study results will be presented Sunday, Sept. 18 at the 2016 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) annual meeting in San Diego. Led by Dr. Ghanem, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit was among the first in the country to perform TORS using the da [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-09-18T06:20:43-07:00September, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

High school gamers are better than medical residents at robotic surgery

Source: killscreendaily.com Author: Joseph Bernstein Science Daily reports: Both high school sophomores who played video games on average two hours per day and college students who played four hours of video games daily matched, and in some cases exceeded, the skills of the residents on parameters that included how much tension the subjects put on their instruments, how precise their hand-eye coordination was and how steady their grasping skills were when performing surgical tasks suck as suturing, passing a needle or lifting surgical instruments with the robotic arms. "The inspiration for this study first developed when I saw my son, an avid video game player, take the reins of a robotic surgery simulator at a medical convention," said Dr. Sami Kilic, lead author of the study and associate professor and director of minimally invasive gynecology in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UTMB. "With no formal training, he was immediately at ease with the technology and the type of movements required to operate the robot." Kilic came up the idea for the study during a demonstration of the robotic da Vinci Surgical System. A company representative was giving surgeons turns manipulating the da Vinci, and one user was doing particularly well. Kilic, impressed, walked over to the operations console to see who the ace was. "It was my 10-year-old son," Kilic says. Kilic's son, and most of the test subjects, were shooting game buffs. Kilic says that the hand eye coordination and response time for people of his son's [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-11-30T05:52:07-07:00November, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Trans-oral robotic surgery has all the right stuff to remove head & neck cancers

Source: inventorspot.com Author: T Goodman Historically, surgical removal or oral and throat cancers have not allowed patients to go back to living their normal daily lives. Oral cancer removals caused severe pain, particularly ugly scarring, and an inability to eat, speak, or swallow normally. Even breathing problems might result. But now along comes TORS, the robot with the right stuff. Just over a dozen hospitals in the U.S. currently have the TORS, which stands for Trans-Oral Robotic Surgery. The system uses the da Vinci Surgical System, which has developed since the mid 90's to arguably be the most successful robotic surgery system in the world. It employs tiny robotic surgical instruments, operated from a command station by the appropriately trained human surgeon who maneuvers the robot's 'arms' and instruments. As with other da Vinci procedures, TORS has the benefits of being less invasive, with fewer complications and shorter hospital stays. There is less blood loss, little scarring, and fewer temporary and permanent side effects, such as loss of speech or swallowing ability. Generally, there is no need to begin cancer therapy with radiation, which would increase the discomfort and recovery time. Tamer A. Ghanem, M.D., Ph.D., director of Head and Neck Oncology and Reconstructive Surgery Division in the Department of OtolaryngologyHead & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, says that with TORS, "Surgeons operate with greater precision and control using the TORS approach, minimizing the pain, and reducing the risk of possible [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-09-02T19:22:47-07:00September, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Robot gives surgeons another weapon against throat cancer

Source: www.star-telegram.com Author: Jan Jarvis It started with hoarseness that refused to go away. Then swallowing became difficult. Within a month, Madonna Griffin could no longer eat. By the time she finally learned what was causing the hoarseness, she could barely breathe. It took Dr. Yadro Ducic just one look down her throat to identify the cause. A 2-inch tumor was growing in the 38-year-old Azle grandmother's larynx, blocking her airway. "I could look down her throat and see this big cancer," said Ducic, co-medical director of the Skull Base Center at Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth. "But the voice box was obstructing the view." To remove the tumor, Ducic turned to the da Vinci Surgical System, which gave him a much better view of the throat from different angles. "The nice thing about the robot is you can see around the corner so you can operate around the corner," he said. "It allows you to take out things you can't otherwise." The May 21 operation is believed to be the first such throat surgery in North Texas using the da Vinci Surgical System and was performed less than six months after the federal Food and Drug Administration approved the procedure, according to Baylor All Saints officials. A week later, UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeons performed the same robotic surgery on a patient in Dallas. The transoral robotic surgery is an alternative to the conventional approach using lasers to remove throat tumors. For the nearly 13,000 people [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-07-20T07:28:47-07:00July, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

FDA clears transoral robotic surgery – developed at Penn –for tumors of mouth, throat and voice box

Source: www.healthcanal.com Author: staff A minimally invasive surgical approach developed by head and neck surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The da Vinci Surgical System (Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Sunnyvale, California) has been cleared for TransOral Otolaryngology surgical procedures to treat benign tumors and selected malignant tumors in adults. Drs. Gregory S. Weinstein and Bert W. O’Malley, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Department of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery founded the world’s first TransOral Robotic Surgery (TORS) programat Penn Medicine in 2004, where they developed and researched the TORS approach for a variety of robotic surgical neck approaches for both malignant and benign tumors of the mouth, voice box, tonsil, tongue and other parts of the throat. Since 2005, approximately 350 Penn patients have participated in the world’s first prospective clinical trials of TORS. These research trials compromise the largest and most comprehensive studies of the technology on record. “TORS has dramatically improved the way we treat head and neck cancer patients, completely removing tumors while preserving speech, swallowing, and other key quality of life issues,” said Bert O’Malley, Jr., MD, professor and chairman of Penn Medicine’s Department of Otorhinolaryngology:Head and Neck Surgery. “It is very exciting that a concept conceived at PENN, evaluated in pre-clinical experimental models at Penn, tested in clinical trials at Penn, and then taught to key surgeons and institutions both within the U.S. and internationally has been officially [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-12-19T23:10:00-07:00December, 2009|Oral Cancer News|