• 9/23/2006
  • Nashville, TN
  • staff
  • NewsChannel5.com

Throat and neck cancer surgeries can leave patients with serious side effects like disfiguring scars and speech problems. But with the help of a robot, two surgeons are the first in the world to treat these types of cancers without making even one incision.

Surgeons used to cut across the throat to remove the tumor. But the robot operates through the patient’s mouth, so the only incisions are small and are made on the inside of the body.

“Now, we do remove the entire tumor but we don’t have to do things such as wide incisions on the neck, or breaking or splitting the jaw bone and moving the tongue aside,” head and neck surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania Bert O’Malley Jr., MD said.

Doctors O’Malley and Gregory Weinstein developed the technique.

“The robot allows me to move my hands on the joysticks of the robotic consul, and it’s as if my hands were made this small, and I could get them right into the mouth to do the operation,” Weinstein said.

The two surgeons partner on each operation — one at the consul, and one by the patient’s side.

Patients lose less blood and can actually talk and swallow easier after the robotic surgery because there’s no cutting.

“We are now being able to do the surgery with decreased side effects,” Weinstein said.

These surgeries used to take up to 15 hours. Now, with the robot they take about three.

Each year in the US, there are about 50,000 cases of throat and neck cancer. To date, the doctors have performed more than 60 surgeries this way.