Robotic Surgery: An Option for Some Ovarian Cancer Patients

"Some of the gifts that robotic surgery provides are that it decreases any essence of tremor, and improves visualization, and stabilization of tissue. My feeling is that it provides an improved surgical outcome. That's not supported by literature, but I feel like robotic surgery can be cleaner. I can see every microscopic little blood vessel, maybe better than my own eyesthough I doubt it! I think it's adding many positives for patient care."

The length of surgery depends on the extent of the cancer, the amount of disease that doctors are treating. Typically, says Thomes Pepin, it lasts somewhere between two and perhaps four hours, depending on a surgeon's efficiencyin preparing the patient and also in their approach.

And while the patient is, of course, asleep and unaware of the time, the waiting can be stressful for family members. "A step our hospital has taken to try to alleviate some of the stress is by providing text message updates to the family. So while the patient is undergoing surgery family members will get updates such as, ‘Things are going well,’ ‘We're moving on to this portion of the procedure, this is what’s is coming up next,’" etc. Keeping the family apprised can make the the wait time easier.

Minimally invasive robotic surgery can minimize blood loss and recovery time and help improve outcomes. The pain can be less severe when patients wake up, plus they tend to do well with post operative pain control. "Though every patient is different many do not need narcotic medications after robotic surgery,” Thomes Pepin says "That's not absolutely universal, but many can manage most of their pain with ibuprofen or Tylenol."

"There's still some soreness. Maybe some cramping, discomfort, since we do a lot of work internally," one doctor told SurvivorNet. "But usually not severe, intense pain like you would have if you had a big open incision."

Thomes Pepin says doctors can also do local injections of pain medication around the incision. Surgeons may do something called TAP blocks or local blocks of the abdominal nerve supply that can help us avoid narcotics post operatively. This helps patients to more quickly resume normal bowl function.

Unfortunately, robotic surgery isn't an option for every woman with ovarian cancer. That's because many patients have disease that is too spread out for the robotic platform to achieve the same results as doctors can get through an open incisionas the goal of surgery is to remove as much of or all visible cancer as possible. Doctors "need to pre-operatively assess whether or not robotic surgery will be feasible for a patient," Thomes Pepin says.

But when and if the situation is right, robotic surgery is a nice tool to have.

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