 Namaskar. This is Feeba 104 FM. My name is Sri Ram Surya. Say hello to Dr. Ajay Asshetty. He is lead consultant urologist with Manipal Hospitals, Yashwanpur and Hebal. Doctor, welcome to Feeba 104 FM. It's so nice to have you here. Apart from what you do best saving lives, you are here communicating and raising awareness to everyone who's tuned in. Really, really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. And at the same time, we are getting to know so much about Dr. Ajay here. I have a golf lover, can play the guitar, so very talented in so many ways as well. Now, I know there's been a lot of advancement in the field of medical science and this is one of my favorite topics so I can't wait to dive into this. We've been doing a lot of work from home facing the camera, staying at home and working but I've always wondered, can a doctor also do work from home? Can they be elsewhere and perform a surgery that's happening in another part of the world? I want to get into the brass tacks of laparoscopic surgery against robotic surgery. What is the difference? Conventional laparoscopic surgery was what we were doing for a long time and the difference between laparoscopy and robotics is in laparoscopic surgery the surgeon is standing next to the patient operating inside the patient using small miniature ports and instruments but the difficulty is that the mobility inside the patient's body with laparoscopy is very limited to the limited wrist movement that we have. The advantage of robotics is that the surgeon is sitting on a console operating a joystick which controls the robotic arms and the robotic arms have a far greater freedom of movement inside the patient's body. It's almost like a human hand operating. I think the biggest advantage of robotics over laparoscopy is the freedom of movement that is available to operate within the patient's body. Are there times when even you as a doctor have gone, wow, this really is involvement and advancement. I never knew that this is going to happen in my career as a doctor. Absolutely. I think this technology is so amazing right now and this technology has evolved I'm guessing since the last 10-12 years and the evolution has led to this technology become so fine and surgeries can be done with so much finesse with 12 years of learning in this technology. It is quite mind-boggling. What are the advantages of robotic surgery over laparoscopic surgery, doctor? I think the biggest advantage like I mentioned is that the robotic arms are easier to reach in difficult places inside the human body where laparoscopy can become difficult. But the robotic arm functions almost like a human arm and the typical place would be within the deep recesses of the pelvis where there are multiple organs in such narrow space. The arms allow easier surgery. The second thing is you are operating in three-dimensional vision, two-dimensional. The third is the magnification. The magnification is so high that you can see every red blood cell inside the body. And lastly, I think most importantly, the surgeon is sitting on a console and operating and that eliminates fatigue which can be a big part of long surgeries. When you are standing next to the patient and operating for 7-8 hours it can be quite tiring but on a robotic surgery you are sitting on a console and operating on a joystick. So it eliminates fatigue and makes surgeries more safer. Wow, here we are in 2022. I feel you doctors are living in 2050. It's amazing how you're able to save lives using all this technology. Doctor, what surgeries can be done using robotic surgery? I think in urology pretty much every surgery can be done on the kidney, ureter, bladder, prostate. But I'm guessing the most important place that the robot has an advantage over laparoscopy is in the deep recesses of the pelvis especially when you operate on prostate cancer. In reconstructive surgeries on the kidney or bladder where precision is an absolute must, robot has an advantage. And some surgeries where you do to remove cancers from the kidney it's a surgery called partial nephrectomy where you're trying to save the kidney and only remove the cancer. That's a surgery that requires a lot of precision. I think robot has definitely an advantage. Wow, thank you for shedding the light and giving us an insight to what technology is like today. And these are things that you deal with on a daily. Laparoscopy, robotic surgery, when we come back we will be talking about renal transplantation with doctor Ajay Shetty. Keep it right here. This is Fever FM.