National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) yesterday celebrated its 1,000th operation using the da Vinci robotic surgical system, which was introduced to the hospital in late 2011.
Department of Surgery director Lai Hong-shiee (賴鴻緒) said the 1,000th da Vinci surgery was carried out on Nov. 24 on an 81-year-old man, surnamed Wang (王), who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer six months ago after experiencing bloody and narrow stools.
“On the same day, we also used the robotic system to help remove a rectal tumor located just 6cm away from the anal verge of a 37-year-old woman, surnamed Chia (賈). She is a computer engineer who has a stressful job, often dines out and seldom consumes vegetables,” Lai told a press conference in Taipei.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
Lai said that while the hospital was only the ninth one to purchase the sophisticated robotic platform, it has achieved three milestones in its application: It was the first medical institution in Taiwan to perform 1,000 da Vinci surgeries; it has carried out the most diverse types of operations using the system; and its da Vinci surgeries have the highest difficulty level on average when compared with those performed by other hospitals in the country.
The 1,000 operations covered: 229 general surgeries; 130 thoracic surgeries; 97 colorectal surgeries; 98 cardiac and vascular surgeries; 110 ear, nose and throat surgeries; 263 urological surgeries; and 73 gynecological surgeries, Lai said, adding that the hospital plans to purchase its second da Vinci system early next year.
As of August this year, a total of 22 medical facilities nationwide boasted a da Vinci surgical system, with the Tri-Service General Hospital being the first to acquire the machine in September 2004.
Singling out the most noteworthy case, Yang Tsung-lin (楊宗霖), an attending physician at NTUH’s Department of Otolaryngology and Head Neck Surgery, said that in 2012, he used da Vinci to remove a salivary gland tumor from a 30-year-old woman’s neck through a 5cm incision along the hairline behind her right ear.
“Unlike traditional surgery, which can only gain access to such a tumor through a direct opening on the neck, leaving behind a long visible scar shaped like a necklace, my surgical approach managed not only to take out the tumor, but also allowed the patient to maintain her pre-surgical appearance without any obvious scars,” Yang said.
Yang said the scar-free method, which was published in the British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in May, can be applied to the removal of almost all kinds of head and neck tumors, and has been performed on more than 100 patients at the hospital over the past two years.
However, as the difficulty of a surgery is inversely proportional to the size of the incision, the method can only be performed by well-trained doctors with abundant experience in operating the da Vinci system, Yang added.
Department of Surgery vice director Liang Jin-tung (梁金銅), who carried out the hospital’s 1,000th and 1,001st da Vinci operations, said that since the system is devoid of hand tremors, it is particularly ideal for the removal of colorectal tumors in patients who are obese or have a narrow pelvic cavity.
“Of course, the system also has its disadvantages, such as being large and heavy, and it does not give the operator a sense of touch,” Liang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching