- When you're sitting in the robot,
you feel like you have control
over all of the technology around you.
You've got your hands controlling one thing,
your eyes and your feet yet another,
and you apply that technology
and say, "Let's look at what the robot can show me."
- The surgeon needs to be committed.
It's not something that they're going to say,
"Oh, I'm going to become a robotic surgeon,"
and then they're doing robotic surgery the next day.
You want to be able to have practiced it
both in your mind and kinesthetically
over and over and over
so that it's automatic for you
when you're in the operating room.
- You're right up against some of these big
important structures of the body,
having control over really important outcomes.
Are you going to be able to connect all the dots
to be successful?
My name is Mary Maish.
I'm a thoracic and foregut surgeon.
When I came here to Lake Forest,
I began to investigate the opportunities
to take in some new developments in lung surgery,
mostly in the robotic arena.
The idea of bringing into my practice now
yet another surgical technique was exciting,
but also, it's a little scary
because the surgeons were so routine
with how we approach things.
One of the things that worried me
about going to the da Vinci robot
is that while I do open surgery,
I feel like I can see with my fingers.
I had this feeling of going into the operating room
not knowing whether or not
I'm going to be able to accomplish it.
So I kind of came with a mindset of like,
"Okay, you know, convince me."
- The way we used to do surgery,
we had no choice but to do an open surgery.
It was big incisions.
Patients would take three months to recover.
Then we were able to go to minimally invasive
laparoscopic surgery, which was small incisions,
but there were some real limitations with that.
You had 2D visualizations instead of 3D,
no wrist to the instrument.
And that's where Intuitive introduced the da Vinci system.
Here was a need and here was a technology
that could meet those needs.
The da Vinci system is unique in that it allows
the surgeon to be able to see more, to be more precise.
The mental processes and the actual physical steps
is different than in laparoscopic or open surgery.
The surgeon needs to be committed
to all the training opportunities that we offer them.
- With da Vinci, your eyes are so far superior
that now you can program your brain to understand
how things feel based on what you see.
And I mean, it was mind blowing.
The training center at UIC made it all happen.
To be able to go an hour from home during the pandemic
to get this world-class training,
it really allowed me to get the program going
at the time that I did.
- As a surgeon, you're always learning
and you're always improving.
You have to be willing to practice,
get that muscle memory.
You have to be willing to learn from your peers,
you have to be willing to learn from the trainer,
you have to be willing, sometimes,
to listen to somebody else do it a different way
that makes sense or is more efficient.
So it's a multi-step pathway that our team has put together.
There's some online learning that they have to do.
We recommend video reviews, case observations.
There's a simulator that we recommend them working on,
and then they will come to a day in one of our labs
where they work with our professionally trained trainers
teaching that surgeon
how to use the system safely and effectively,
and to really commit to all the training opportunities
that we offer them.
- Okay. These are the skills that you need to work on
on the simulator so that you can get to a certain level,
especially when you're operating on real people.
Sylvia Dunback is by far one of my favorite patients.
When she first came to me, she had two lung cancers
and she was understandably nervous.
- She said, "Sylvia, I'm going to tell you,
you are going to die,
but you are not going to die from this surgery."
- So I did her initial surgery
using laparoscopy in the chest.
She was very reluctant to go ahead with the next surgery.
- It took me quite a while to recover.
I was in quite a bit of pain and I took opioids.
- I told her, "Why don't you wait?
I might have this robotic platform up and running by then.
You might be able to benefit from it."
She was understandably nervous, especially for the unknown,
but for her second operation,
we were able to do a very clean dissection
and remove just the portion of the lung
she needed taken out.
After surgery, she had very little pain
in comparison to the other side.
- She saved my life,
that's how I feel.
That makes me want to cry, but it's true.
- That kind of gave me the encouragement to continue
to march forward in my robotic platform.
So that's super exciting.
And being able to bring it home back to the patient
with that same enthusiasm and confidence,
it's not found in many places in life.