On November 1, 2022, four da Vinci robot-assisted surgeries were being performed simultaneously in the operating rooms of PUMCH, sending the number of robotic-assisted surgeries in the hospital to exceed 2,000. With the increasing prevalence of robot-assisted surgeries, multidisciplinary teams in the Department of General Surgery, Urology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Thoracic Surgery and the operating rooms of Anesthesiology have completed 1,000 robot-assisted surgeries in less than two years, and difficult surgeries such as pancreaticoduodenectomy, pancreatic body and tail resections and radical nephrectomy have, aided by robots, become common. Robot-assisted surgeries are growing at a fast pace and their concentration climbing.

The robot-assisted surgery team for general surgery led by Honorary President Academician Zhao Yupei has completed nearly 1,000 surgeries so far, of which the most difficult pancreatic surgeries account for more than 80%. Professor Dai Menghua of General Surgery explained: “Robots can better help us stick to the surgical tenet of preserving organs and functions, rather than just resecting everything indiscriminately.”

Robot-assisted surgeries for urology at PUMCH mostly target complex urological malignancies and pheochromocytoma. Ji Zhigang, Director of the Department of Urology, said: “At present, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy has almost reached the standard of bloodless surgery, next we will move towards robot-assisted kidney transplantation.”

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology has been carrying out robot-assisted surgery since December 2021. The teams of Director Xiang Yang, Professor Yang Jiaxin, and Professor Yang Juanjun have accumulated success experience in sentinel lymph node resection and systemic lymph node dissection surgery for patients with endometrial cancer, fertility-sparing cervical cancer surgery, and gynecological surgery targeting malignant tumors for severely obese patients with BMI over 40. The thoracic surgical teams lead by Dr. Li shanqing and Dr. Liu Hongsheng use the robotic video-assisted surgery (RVATS) technique for a variety of procedures, such as: lobectomy, segmentectomy, sleeve lobectomy, minimally invasive esophagectomy, enucleation of benign esophageal tumors, and thymectomy using the subxiphoid approach, etc.

Currently, PUMCH has four da Vinci surgical systems, which help the hospital optimize the management system and meet the growing clinical needs. The operating rooms of the Department of Anesthesiology are bent on building a surgical “aircraft carrier” platform for the hospital, and multidisciplinary collaboration promotes the rapid integration and development of new technologies. Professor Huang Yuguang and Executive Deputy Director Shen Le of the Department of Anesthesiology, and Executive Chief Head Nurse Wang Huizhen of the operating rooms have expressed views and opinions to that effect.  

With patients’ best interests in mind, PUMCH always seeks to standardize the clinical application of new technologies. Doctors consider both patients’ health conditions and economic conditions, and then, on the basis of fully informed consultations, decide on personalized surgical plans together with patients. The Department of Medical Engineering plays a coordinating role in facilitating the implementation of new projects and strictly manages medical projects, equipment and consumables, and medical and nursing staff with access to robotic surgical systems. The Department of Anesthesiology keeps making anesthesia administration for robotic-assisted surgeries more targeted and precise to better ensure surgical safety. The operating rooms carry out qualification training of all nurses for robotic-assisted surgeries, and take the lead in developing an information management system for robot-assisted surgery consumables that can enable whole-process traceability and meticulous counting and verification on multiple dimensions.

Academician Zhao Yupei’s team were performing a robot-assisted surgery

Reporter: Fu Tanping and Qian Dingzhu

Picture courtesy: Du Yufu

Translator: Liu Haiyan

Editor: Wang Yao