Young mother gets back to life quickly with robotic surgery

Tammi McAlister woke up from her recent robotic hysterectomy and didn’t require any pain medication. Sound like a dream? Luckily for McAlister it wasn’t just as dream.

The 33-year-old’s surgery was the first performed using the da Vinci® SI robotic surgical system at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Hurst-Euless-Bedford.

Not only did she experience minimal pain, but in less than a week she was back at her 10-year-old son’s baseball games and living life normally. McAlister said that after watching it take six long weeks for her sister to recover from a traditional hysterectomy she decided to research her options. After doing her homework she saw that recovery times with robotic hysterectomies typically are much shorter than even laparascopic procedures.

“I felt having it done robotically was definitely the way to go if you have to have it done,” she said. “I think I took one pain pill. I feel fine. I keep telling my sister you should have done it this way.”

The da Vinci® robot enables surgeons to make small one centimeter incisions and perform total laparoscopic hysterectomies, rather than the larger incisions used previously. And because the procedures are done with such small incisions patients tend to recover faster and with less pain.

“We have seen great success with the first cases completed at Texas Health HEB,” said Dr. Mark Messing, a gynecologic oncology surgeon on the medical staff at Texas Health HEB who performed McAlister’s surgery.

Earlier this week McAlister got to see the da Vinci® robot and even practice using it. Texas Health HEB had a mobile unit on site for employees and the community to test. McAlister said that it a little odd to see a similar robot to the one Dr. Messing used in her surgery, but thought it was fascinating to get to maneuver the machine herself. (See photo at right of McAlister looking at the robot in action.)

In addition to gynecological surgery, the da Vinci® Surgical System can be used to treat endometriosis, fibroid tumors, plus a variety of cancers, such as gynecologic cancer. The $1.7 million robot provides 3D HD vision capabilities, plus hand-eye instrumentation and movement for controlled precision and accuracy. The da Vinci® system is controlled by surgeons seated at a console next to the patient's bedside.