- I remember distinctly
when I first sat on the console—
I just knew that this will be how surgery will be performed.
But, there was tremendous skepticism early on.
- There are definitely misconceptions
about robotic surgery.
People ask me a lot,
"Oh, you must've played a million video games as a kid."
Surgery with da Vinci— it's not just like video games.
- Doing robotic surgery—
it is the most immersive experience,
where you feel that you're inside the patient's body.
- When I sit down at the surgeon console,
I really feel like I'm just an extension of the instruments.
So in 90 minutes, I make an enormous impact
on someone's life.
- I want to be able to grow old and be a grandmother,
and I really didn't see that in my future.
I really was concerned.
This is the one thing that has completely changed my life.
- I find the operating room to be my haven.
It is one of the places where there is the most activity,
but there is also a strange kind
of peace and quiet and rhythm.
I am the chief of the section
of esophageal and foregut surgery at NYU Langone Health.
And there are so many spaces where we work in
where the precision really matters.
And I knew that there were limitations
to the existing platform for minimally invasive surgery.
That's where I really thought, right about 2011,
that I wanted to really embrace robotic surgery.
I felt that this will allow me to do surgery better.
This will allow me to do more complicated surgery
and still keep it minimally invasive.
But there was a lot of pushback and access issues
for general surgeons.
When I first got into it, there was no community,
but surgeons now have a lot of role models around them
or people they look up to within the department
who are doing a lot of robotic surgery.
And this generation is just maybe innately more comfortable
with this kind of computer interface
between them and patients.
- In open surgery, we would always sew towards ourself
to close this, so I mimic that in robotic surgery.
I look at the people that learned this in the beginning,
and I have no idea how they stuck with it
without all the resources we have now.
I was first introduced to robotics
during my residency and fellowship.
Once I went through the training
and became more familiar with it,
I 100% bought in.
- I had the surgery in February of 2021,
and this was July of 2021.
I always struggled with weight, even as a child.
By the time I would reach 50,
I was approximately 220 pounds,
and my blood sugar was increasing.
I was at a point where I had to make choices for myself,
or I was gonna not live a long, healthy life.
As a nurse, I had seen several patients have gastric bypass.
I worked in the ER, and I saw a lot of complications,
and it really discouraged me.
I thought that would be something
I would never consider doing:
to go in and to do a procedure that's gonna
change me for the rest of my life was scary,
but as my weight increased
and I started having a lot more comorbidities,
I started thinking this might be the one thing
that will work.
Thankfully, one of our new providers at the time,
Amanda Pysher, changed everything for me.
- Hey!
You look so good! How are you?
- Good! Nice to see you!
- You too! Look at you!
I commonly joke that I'm the most emotional
bariatric surgeon on the planet,
but it's really just because I love my job,
and I love my patients so much.
And seeing them do well after
is the best feeling in the world.
- Gastric sleeve surgery, it was something
I kind of felt like I would never consider doing myself,
but there've been so many advances,
especially with robotic surgery,
and people having a lot less complications,
and people being able to go home the same day.
So in February of 2021,
I had the gastric bypass procedure done.
Robotic surgery's one of the main reasons
why I felt completely comfortable with it.
- In my own clinical experience, robotic surgery
has been the safest option that I can offer to my patients.
My patients that I was operating on using the da Vinci robot
had way shorter lengths of hospital stays,
had way fewer complications.
So about three years ago,
I transitioned my practice to 100% robotics.
- I was discharged the next morning at, I believe, 7:30.
I was ready to go.
I got home. I had no pain.
I took Tylenol once or twice,
and was back to work less than two weeks later,
feeling 100%.
- We are turning the skeptics into believers.
We're really beginning to see how we can shrink
our operative times
and have great outcomes while using robotics.
- There's definitely growing interest
in robotic-assisted surgery.
I think it has been easier for me to transition
to robotics than the first adapters years ago.
One of the reasons why I feel so strongly about mentoring:
I want to be able to give back and help others
the way that the mentors above me helped me.
- The shared sense of purpose of the robotic-surgery community
now is something that is so refreshing.
We all believe in the merits of this.
So I'm very excited to see what the future holds.
- We're helping people live for their families and their friends.
I just can't think of any other surgery
which has a bigger impact than that.