When I first
started, I got up that morning and got me a cup of coffee.
I had a cough.
Something came up in my throat, and I had a lot of blood.
And I'm like, 'this is not good.'
So, woke my wife and said we got to go to St Mary's.
A scan found a spot on my lung.
And then they recommended right off the bat, said 'we're not going to play.'
We're going to send you right to Georgetown.
It looked suspicious for either an infection
or a cancer, a tumor.
The next step for Mr.
Norris is to find out whether it's cancer or not
and to find out if it has spread.
The traditional pathway for diagnosis, staging
and treatment of a lung nodule starts with a CT scan.
A few days later, a PET scan, consultation
with a pulmonologist, a bronchoscope,
wait for pathology for another few days,
get referred to a thoracic surgeon,
get put on the schedule for the operating room,
and then have the surgery done.
Sometimes this takes several weeks to happen.
But here at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, we're excited
to have the ability to combine two different procedures together.
This makes us the only hospital in the region that allows us to do
diagnosis and removal of the cancer all at the same setting
during a 5 to 6 hour surgical procedure.
So for
the biopsies, we need tissue to confirm whether or not it is a lung cancer
and we have the high resolution CT scan.
We can feed that into our ION
robot bronchoscopy software.
And this software allows us to create a pathway towards the target
to be able to zoom in to find out which airway is
the correct airway, the closest airway to get to the target.
The navigation system allows us to preview the pathway
of where we're going to go as we drive through the airways.
You'll see a virtual reconstruction of the path to get to the target.
Following the blue line through the airways until we're headed
straight at it.
This information is then put into our robot bronchoscope
in the suite where we perform the procedure.
A flexible bronchoscope is a camera placed through the airway down the mouth
so we can find the tumor with a direct visualization, with a camera.
And through that robot, we're able to place
small needles and biopsy forceps.
The pathology of the tumor proved that it was in early stage lung cancer.
And then we turn the patient over to Dr. Margolis.
Dr. Margolis
did a robotic assisted thoracic surgery
with removal of the lobe that the cancer was involved
in, using small incisions up to about an inch in size.
It was all as one procedure the same day.
Felt great.
Right after the surgery, I'm sitting up in bed and
the fact that I had a biopsy and they just give the okay
to just do the operation right then and there and that was great.
Didn't have to come back.
So, today we want to go over the CAT
scan results and the good news we see
is no signs of any spots
that look suspicious for any new cancers.
Two thumbs up.
Thank you, Dr. Anderson, very much.
I'm grateful to have this done and be able
to spend time with my wife and family.
I love every minute of it.
MedStar did a fantastic job
and I really, really appreciate
everything.