Yvonne Ba­boolal

If you can af­ford it, you can have a ro­bot do your surgery. This in­for­ma­tion comes to the T&T ath­let­ic world from the Bap­tist Health In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Mi­a­mi. It sounds like some­thing you ex­pect to see on a Sci­Fi chan­nel but it's ac­tu­al­ly be­ing done at South Mi­a­mi Hos­pi­tal's Cen­ter for Ro­bot­ic Surgery. Pe­ter Smith, phys­i­cal ther­a­pist with Bap­tist Health In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter, here in T&T with oth­er per­son­nel from the hos­pi­tal for a sports med­i­cine con­fer­ence, de­scribed the ro­bot­ic surgery last Thurs­day.

"The doc­tor is in the op­er­at­ing room but he does not touch the pa­tient. "The ro­bot moves the in­stru­ments. It's very, very pre­cise. The ro­bot can go in­to places the doc­tor can­not go. It has so many de­grees of mo­tion. "These are ex­cit­ing times." A mag­a­zine from the hos­pi­tal fur­ther states, "Tra­di­tion­al surgery in­volves large in­ci­sions in the chest, ab­domen and neck that re­quire a lengthy re­cov­ery and can re­sult in ma­jor com­pli­ca­tions." The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that through ro­bot­ics, doc­tors now have su­pe­ri­or vi­su­al­i­sa­tion and in­stru­men­ta­tion. With a ro­bot­ic arm, the hos­pi­tal's sur­gi­cal team can re­move dis­eased por­tions of an arthrit­ic knee joint with small in­ci­sions and min­i­mal tis­sue dam­age.

The ro­bot­ic arm per­forms with a com­put­er, cam­eras and GPS track­ing in­for­ma­tion that cre­ate re­al-time, three-di­men­sion­al im­ages of the pa­tient's bone dur­ing surgery. Ro­bot­ic surgery of­fers a quick­er re­cov­ery time. "It's al­most like hav­ing a minia­ture hand in­side the chest cav­i­ty that can use scis­sors, graspers and cautery de­vices in very tight spaces," the mag­a­zine states. Smith said they were here to pro­vide up-to-date in­for­ma­tion on the as­sess­ment, treat­ment and pre­ven­tion of sports in­juries.

"But this can al­so ap­ply to the nor­mal pop­u­la­tion who suf­fer sim­i­lar in­juries in the low­er back, hip and groin." Smith said a lot of T&T ath­letes vis­it the hos­pi­tal at Flori­da for surgery. "It's cost­ly but it's worth it," he said. He said the hos­pi­tal was al­so stay­ing on the cut­ting edge of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion tech­nol­o­gy. He said Bap­tist In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter is one of the lead­ing hos­pi­tals in Flori­da and among the top 50 in the Unit­ed States. "We have been iden­ti­fied with the five per cent for emer­gency med­i­cine," he said. Lisa Niles, the hos­pi­tal busi­ness de­vel­op­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive in T&T, said there was a spe­cial com­pa­ny that helps peo­ple, free of cost, to ac­cess surgery at the in­sti­tu­tion.