Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital

Professor Jeong Eun Seo of Surgery at Digestive Disease Center of Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital successfully performed the hospital’s first robot-assisted gastrectomy with da Vinci Xi, the fourth generation robotic surgical system.

Patient Kim who came to ER for the symptom of vomiting blood and having blood in stool was diagnosed with gastric cancer through an urgent gastroscopy.

Through a multidisciplinary diagnosis and evaluation between Professor Jeong Eun Seo of Surgery and Professor Jae Seung Soh of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Digestive Disease Center, the team decided to perform a robot-assisted distal gastrectomy to remove cancer. Prof. Seo safely removed the area of gastric cancer using da Vinci Xi and then made a new digestive track by connecting the stomach with the duodenum.

As there are important organs around the stomach such as the liver, pancreas, and aorta, and also a possibility of a lot of bleeding, gastrectomy requires an accurate and high level of surgical skill. Recently, along with conventional open surgery and laparoscopic surgery, robot-assisted gastrectomy has been getting popular.

The robotic surgical system allows surgeons to find the bleeding area by seeing ultra-high-definition three-dimensional images that are 10 to 15 times larger with a wide viewing angle of 80°. In addition, the four robotic arms make it easier for doctors to sewing tissues more quickly and to blocking the bleeding area more accurately.

As the patient experienced little pain and had a very small scar after the surgery, he could walk around from the next day of surgery and was discharged after seven days without complications. He is now trying to adapt to a new lifestyle and dietary habits with no additional symptoms.

“I didn’t think I had any particular symptoms, but I was worried that I had a severe disease after experiencing blood stool,” said the patient Kim. He added, “I am thankful for the medical personnel of Hallym for their accurate diagnosis and quick decision to go through robotic surgery.”

“The key to the success of gastric cancer surgery is sufficiently resecting not only the tumor itself but also the lymph node tissue that cancer cell can spread. Fortunately, the patient had early-stage gastric cancer without lymph node metastasis, so we were able to remove the tumor by robot-assisted surgery,” said Prof. Seo. She also mentioned, “We will do our best to make Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital become a mecca for robot-assisted surgery in Korea by gradually increasing the number of robot-assisted gastric cancer surgery and expanding the scope of robot surgery.”

By Jonghun Im, Int’l Cooperation Team, HUMC (imjonghun@hallym.or.kr)