-Robotic Surgery-

Hi, my name is Dr. John Linton. I am the Director of International Health Care Center here at Yonsei University, Severance Hospital. We are the oldest university hospital established in Korea and have our origins in 1885. We are also the only JCI approved hospital here in Korea. Our medical school has been known for its excellence and we are a university based multispecialty hospital.
Medical travelers receive support through our International Health Care Center, which was opened in 1962. With a staff of English speaking coordinators, the center is well equipped and experienced to meet the needs of medical travelers. In addition to being the referral center for the U.S Army, which has more than 30,000 troops and another 20,000 family members in Korea, we are also the on-call hospital for U.S. Presidential Visits. Other convenient services offered to foreign patients include phone/e-mail consultations with a doctor, transportation and tourism information, discounted accommodation recommendations, interpretation and various other services.
Medical travelers are treated on our international ward, which is the 20th floor of our hospital. Patients are provided with highly-personalized treatment in a comfortable atmosphere. Rooms are equipped with kitchenettes, separate family bathrooms and living space for family members.
Most recently Severance Hospital has become well known throughout Asia and worldwide because of its advances in Robotic Surgery.
The daVinci system is not a real robot system with artificial intelligence, but it is one of the teleoperative manipulation surgical systems that can reduce tremor, motion scaling, and it has dexterous jointed wrist function. The procedure that can be done by the daVinci System, there are no limitations, but the main indication of daVinci System is difficult laparoscopic procedure such as prostate cancer surgery.
Compared to the conventional laparoscopic surgery, it has three main advantages. The first one, it has stereoscopic 3D images. The second, it has two more joints that laparoscopic surgery does not have. Actually it has 7 degrees of freedom joint motions. Finally the daVinci system does not have fulcrum limitation. It is very difficult to say that, but it can be used by the laparoscopic surgery in addition to the open surgery. For example like transoral, hypopharyngeal cancer surgery.
2005 July 15th, we had performed the first robotic surgery in our country. Until now, with only three years, we had performed 1,500 cases without any mortality. Until now, we have five daVinci Systems in our Yonsei University Health System. Three in our hospital, one in Yongdong Severance Hospital, and the other one is in the Robotic Training Center.
Hello, I am K.H. Rha, the Urologist Associate Professor responsible for urologic robotic surgery here at Severance Hospital Yonsei University. Robotic prostatectomy is a treatment option for localized prostate cancer. It is the surgical removal of prostate using robotic surgical system. I have performed more than 500 cases so far.
Robotic prostatectomy using a robot we call robotic prostatectomy has distinctive advantages. First would be, that it is a form of minimally invasive surgery, which means the invasiveness to the patient is minimal so the recovery to the work, recovery to the discharge to the hospital is much quicker. The major advantage of robotic prostatectomy carries lies on improve cancer control, bladder function and more improved return of potency. I have developed new technique called ultradissection, which fastens the operative time and improves the surgical outcome.
For robotic prostatectomy, the patient is admitted the evening before; after the procedures on the following morning, patients are discharged two days postoperatively. Afterward, the patients can return to work two to four weeks after. He can enjoy golf or any exercise that he would like.
This has been a brief introduction to robotic surgery at Yonsei University Severance Hospital with specific emphasis on robotic prostatectomy. For further information, please visit our website or don’t hesitate to contact us at anytime.