09-09-04 Dr. Fagin on Healthvue

Newscaster: The operating room. Sounds like science fiction but it's about to happen at one Austin hospital. Doctors say the new technology means less trauma for patients. KVUE's Health View's Celine McArthur has the story all new at six.

Newscaster: Robots performing operations with a guided hand of a surgeon. It's not science fiction, it's DaVinci.

Cole Eslyn: With this new technology St. David's is taking surgery beyond the limits of the human Hand.

Newscaster: The DaVinci surgical system is an intuitive laparoscopic surgical robot that allows a surgeon to operate on a patient, or in this demonstration, a bowl of fruit, without being at the table.

Dr. Randy Fagin: The eyes look through this binocular vision here and it actually gives you a 3-D image.

Newscaster: The DaVinci is actually three separate units. The arms of this robot actually perform the procedure that's being controlled by the surgeon at a console about ten feet away. Then this monitor allows the rest of the surgical staff to see what's going on.

Dr. Randy Fagin: It's incredible.

Newscaster: Dr. Randy Fagin is a urologist with St. David's Medical Center. His specialty? Laparoscopic prostate surgery. It's a minimally invasive procedure where all the work is done inside the body using this tiny device. Now Dr. Fagin will use the DaVinci robot to assist in that surgery. He says it will enable him to be even more precise and have an increased range of motion.

Dr. Randy Fagin: The robot has a tiny wrist on the inside that can flex that wrist inside the body and get around corners that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get around.

Newscaster: So patients should recover faster with less pain, blood loss and scarring. But what happens if the computer short circuits? The surgeon hits the emergency stop button and heads for the operating table. Fagin says there's no chance the robot will try and take over.

Dr. Randy Fagin: The robot has no independent movements. It has no independent thoughts. It doesn't do anything on its own. It really takes what I do and make it better.

Newscaster: Surgeons at St. David's Medical Center will be using the DaVinci in October. It an be used for all kinds of procedures including prostatectomies, hysterectomies and heart valve repair. Well no word yet on whether insurance companies will cover the cost of these new high tech procedures. For more information on the DaVinci, you can go to our websit, KVUE.com.

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• The Urology Team
• Dr. Richard Chopp
• Dr. Stephen Hardeman
• Dr. Randy Fagin
• Dr. Melody Denson
• Dr. Elizabeth Houser
• Dr. Elizabeth Rutledge
• Dr. Lester Wang
• Dr. Bryan Kansas
• Dr. Eric Giesler
• Austin
• vasectomy
• prostate cancer
• HIFU