By Kathleen Berger, Executive Producer of Science and Technology

One of the big draws to filling movie theater seats has always been watching futuristic technology and robots! People want to be in awe, as in the case of robots with many mechanical arms over a human being on a surgical table, each arm assigned a job used in the surgery. Only, the robotic surgeries are not sci-fi, they are very real at Mercy Hospital St. Louis!

“That’s where you have to remind them (patients) that I will be the one doing the surgery,” said Sekhar Dharmarajan, MD, colorectal surgeon and director of robotic surgery at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. “I’m controlling the robot.”

Mercy Hospital St. Louis is embracing the latest advancement in robotic surgery, a major update to the widely used da Vinci system by Intuitive, called dV5 or the da Vinci 5 robot.

“The robot has four arms. One has a camera attached to it so that we can see. Then we use three other arms, one is used to hold the tissue and the other two are used to work and dissect the tissue,” Dharmarajan said. “It really gained its application for surgeries in the pelvis. The pelvis is an area that is kind of difficult to access. It’s deep in the body and so it’s hard to get good visualization there.”

According to Intuitive, the robot is the company’s most advanced and integrated platform.

“It’s really a paradigm shift for surgery,” said Dharmarajan. “And Mercy has been one of the first institutions in the St. Louis region to acquire a dV5 robot.”

Dr. Gautum Agarwal said he’s thrilled the robot is here. He’s a urological oncologist at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. The Davinci 5 robotic system is designed to assist surgeons performing minimally invasive procedures in hard-to-reach areas. The technology allows surgeons to perform complex procedures through small incisions, potentially leading to faster recovery times and less pain for patients.

“There are different little openings in the belly where you put these instruments. You actually have access to multiple quadrants, or parts, of the belly on the inside that would require a much larger incision to get to otherwise. You can reach places that are sometimes much, much harder to reach,” said Dr. Agarwal.

The surgeon performing the robotic surgery is controlling the robotic arms and instruments for enhanced precision, dexterity and visualization.

“The camera is actually 10x magnified, so we get great views in the pelvis. We can see very fine detail and when you can see very fine detail, we can do precise and accurate surgery,” said Dharmarajan.

For the surgeon, the dV5 system provides an immersive 3D experience with the camera views from inside the patient’s body. The surgeon’s view is magnified in high resolution, allowing the surgeon to navigate such a small area, as everything appears large.

“Being a surgeon is all about seeing,” said Agarwal. “With 10x the zoom than my own naked eye, I can see tiny little blood vessels, and that helps limit the amount of blood loss that you have.”

The robot has a first-of-its kind technology, Force Feedback, where surgeons feel physical forces they apply to tissue during surgery.

“One of the things robotic surgery was missing was tactile feedback,” said Dharmarajan. “Now with this tactile feedback we can sense in our fingers of how hard we’re pulling on the tissue, how much we are dissecting.”

The Mercy doctors describe a long list of benefits for patients, surgeons and hospitals.

“The main takeaway for patients is that patients generally do much better,” said Dharmarajan. “A lot of patients after robotic surgery will wake up the next day and they’ll feel like ‘I haven’t even had surgery.’ That’s generally what we hear, they say, ‘Oh, I don’t even feel like I had surgery.’”