Hysterectomy by Robot?

Well, I hope it works, I’m scheduled for one next week! (May 15th)!!1

I’m a little nervous!

I had a DaVinci hysterectomy on April 5 (5 weeks ago). I felt so good, I went back to work after three weeks. I would recommend it to anyone who has this offered to them by their doctor.

I had my robotic hysterectomy 1 week ago and would highly recommend it to anyone. I was out of the hospital the next morning. I would compare my recovery to the lap appy I had a year ago. I feel great!!!

It was a week yesterday since my Da vinci surgery. I’m not saying that 7 days is the magic number, but WOW - I feel great! Amazingly so. I highly reoommend this procedure - just make sure your surgeon is trained :).

BTW Sheila, thanks for the link to Recovery!!
Karen

I had a DaVinci hysterectomy, including ovaries removed, at Virginia Mason (Seattle) in 30 days ago. my experience was good. One night in the hospital. But, I’m in my 40s, relatively fit and healthy, and I was overly optimistic on what I could do. This is still major surgery! A week after I flew home (could have driven, but glad not to). Three weeks after I headed off to a meeting, with travel involving planes and a road trip. That all went well so I came home and dug into moving some boxes - today I am laid up with internal discomforts that tells me I overdid it.

The one thing I would ask to have done differently: my surgeon glued the four incisions on my abdomen. They all came apart from simple movement and left fairly deep open wounds. The one with the glue that lasted longest revealed itself last week and now is considerably behind the others in healing. I would ask for disolving sutures or other more secure option.

For all of you women out there who are contemplating hysterectomy, you should know that one does not need a robot to perform minimally invasive hysterectomy. Laparoscopic hysterectomies have been performed without robots for over 15 years and vaginal hysterectomies for longer than that. The amount of pain and recovery time is no different with and without a robot. In fact, for a routine laparoscopic hysterectomy, one is likely to have a longer surgery with more incisions with a robot than without.

The use of the da Vinci for routine gynecologic procedures is purely marketing driven–the hospitals need to recoup the money they paid for the machine and physicians see it as a way to woo new patients dazzled by the technology. There is nothing wrong, medically, with doing a hysterectomy with the da Vinci, but it adds unnecessary costs while providing no benefit to the patient. All of the benefits claimed by the manufacturer of the da Vinci robot are true also of vaginal hysterectomy and laparoscopic hysterectomy without the robot. It is true that laparoscopic hysterectomy is technically somewhat challenging, but if your surgeon isn’t technically skilled enough to do this surgery without the robot, then you might want to think twice as to whether he/she is the surgeon you want operating on you. There are plenty of skilled gynecologic surgeons who do laparoscopic hysterectomy without the robot.

Certain conditions do sometimes warrant the utilizing the technical advantages one can gain with the robot. Some of these are: severe endometriosis, tubal reanastamosis, sacrocolpopexy, cancer cases where lymph node dissection may be needed. Otherwise, straight laparoscopic of vaginal hysterectomy will give you the same benefits of the robot, but with a quicker surgery at less cost to the health care system.

Even without the robot, over 90% of the hysterectomies I perform are done vaginally or laparoscopically, without a large abdominal incision, and my patients get the same benefits as the patients above. I do not currently perform robotic-assisted surgery, but I am planning to learn to, as I do perform other technically difficult surgeries where it may have an advantage.

My take away is that you shouldn’t switch doctors just because yours doesn’t do robotic hysterectomies. However, you should look for a doctor who can do your hysterectomy vaginally or laparoscopically. Unless you have cancer or your uterus is larger than a 4-5 month pregnancy, there is no reason you need to have an old-fashioned abdominal hysterectomy.

I am having the Da Vinci in Febuary on teh 16th to be exact I was really glad to have found this on the web I was scared at first but it sounds like this will probably be one of the less avasive surgery’s that I ever had before.I will let you all know how it goes.Fingers crossed..

I will have a abdom hysterectomy on april 7 th pretty scared but hope it will cure my pain.