The laparoscopic method, which the medical world has used in many fields for long years, provides a great advantage over the older surgical methods. Robotic surgery, which in recent years has begun to become increasingly widespread, is a technologically more advanced form of the laparoscopic method.
Robotic operations, performed with a robot named Da Vinci, are being used in clinical practice in ever more fields, first and foremost in gynaecological cancer conditions. Both methods have certain advantages and disadvantages.
Thanks to the many innovations it brings, the robotic surgical method is increasingly finding more areas of use for itself. When places that are difficult to reach have to be accessed and the operation has to be performed in very narrow areas under a three-dimensional image with the help of instruments that imitate the joints, robotic surgery can today increasingly be preferred.
THE ADVANTAGES OF LAPAROSCOPY
Laparoscopy has many advantages over the traditional surgical methods. A significant part of these advantages is accepted as valid for robotic surgery as well. The greatest advantage that laparoscopy carries within itself is the sense of touch.
Because the surgeon carries out the procedure themselves during the operation, they can determine precisely how much pressure to apply to the operating area. In laparoscopy, changing the positions of the surgical tools or changing the instruments used with the tools is also carried out more simply.
Similarly, the patient’s position can also be changed more easily than in robotic surgery. Almost all of the instruments used in laparoscopy are instruments that have been used by doctors for many years. Although the instruments used in the Da Vinci also show similarities with laparoscopy instruments, the fact that these instruments are on robotic arms and that the robot is directed in a different way may require surgeons to specialise in this device for a certain period.
THE ADVANTAGES THAT COME WITH ROBOTIC SURGERY
With robotic surgery, a more comfortable setting is achieved both for the patient and for the doctor. The surgeon manages the whole operation seated at the console. For this reason they experience less physical difficulty during the operation. With the Da Vinci, as in all closed surgery, rapid recoveries are achieved in patients. For this reason the length of hospital stay after the operation also falls significantly.
In robotic surgery, unlike in laparoscopy, a three-dimensional rather than a two-dimensional image is obtained. In addition, the absence of any tremor in the robotic arms, unlike the human hand, ensures that the operation passes more safely. In this way the risk of damage to the surrounding tissues in the operating area is reduced to a minimum.
In robotic surgery, because the instruments known as “trocars”, which allow the tools to enter the abdomen through the abdominal wall, remain fixed in the abdominal wall, there is less strain at the trocar sites compared with laparoscopy. As a result of this, less pain is felt in the front wall of the abdomen after the operation.