Dr. Jennifer Young Interviewed by PoshSEVEN on Robotic Surgery Advances

Dr. Jennifer Young of The Urology Group was recently interviewed by PoshSeven on advances in robotic surgery, including laparoscopy surgery. We invite patients to read the article in full here.

See article highlights below:

“Though it is still a relatively new option – it was just in 2000 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the da Vinci Surgery System as the first robotic system for laparoscopic surgery – and not offered widely, those people who work in robotic surgery can’t praise its benefits enough.

Jennifer Young, MD, is one of those advocates. As the director of robotic surgery at StoneSprings Hospital in Dulles, Virginia, she has seen how the method has revolutionized some surgical procedures.

“What we used 20 years ago when you had prostate or kidney cancer or needed your bladder removed, for example,” she says, “would mean we’d have to do a big incision, take things out, and do reconstruction, and you had a risk of needing a blood transfusion.” Patient recovery could be long, too, Dr. Young says. “If you had an upper kidney tumor, we would need to take out a rib, and you would have to not be active for eight weeks from the open surgery,” she says.”

--

“The use of the robot enables greater capabilities than a doctor would have with traditional open surgery. Controlling the miniaturized surgical instruments that fit through a tiny incision – usually just a quarter-inch long – allows the doctors a greater range of motion and precision.

But it is the doctor who is still doing the work, Young adds. If the words “robotic surgery” conjures images from a science fiction film of robots gone rogue, fear not: the robot is just a tool, one of many that doctors can use.

“The robot is just a tool. It’s not doing the surgery itself. It’s not controlling it – it’s just helping us to guide the instruments differently,” Dr. Young says. In robotic surgery, the doctor is not bedside, but sitting at a console in the surgical room, guiding the robot.”

You can learn more about robotic surgery through The Urology Group here.