Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

West Shore Med­ical Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal part­nered with the British High Com­mis­sion last week to host a sem­i­nar for sur­geons at the com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence, tar­get­ing spe­cial­ist en­gi­neer­ing ro­bot­ic surgery.

It’s un­like what the ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal sur­geons would be ex­posed to and ac­cord­ing to West Shore Med­ical’s Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer Stephen King, such tech­nol­o­gy can “re­de­fine health­care in the re­gion”.

La­paro­scop­ic surg­eries have long re­placed open surg­eries. La­paro­scop­ic surg­eries ex­plore the ab­dom­i­nal and/or pelvic cav­i­ties through one or two key­hole in­ci­sions. How­ev­er, en­gi­neer­ing ro­bot­ic surg­eries are now rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the way sur­geons per­form surg­eries with the use of ro­bots. Through a sin­gle in­ci­sion, some­times through the navel, ro­bot­ic surg­eries are cut­ting down the open­ings dur­ing surgery while al­so de­creas­ing the re­cov­ery time while sur­geons are bet­ter able to see what is hap­pen­ing in­side the body dur­ing surgery.

Such ad­vance­ment in tech­nol­o­gy calls for re­train­ing and re­pur­pos­ing with­in the lo­cal med­ical in­dus­try and 20 sur­geons had the op­por­tu­ni­ty last week Wednes­day to come face to face with sur­gi­cal de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place in the de­vel­oped world.

Frank Curiel, pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Med­eri N V is the sup­pli­er of the sur­gi­cal ro­bot and host­ed the sem­i­nar which in­clud­ed morn­ing and af­ter­noon ses­sions. Ap­pear­ing vir­tu­al­ly at the sem­i­nar was a sur­geon rep­re­sen­ta­tive from CMR Sur­gi­cal, a

British med­ical de­vice com­pa­ny based in Cam­bridge that pro­duces ro­bot-as­sist­ed surgery sys­tems. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive dis­cussed how they use the ro­bot and what it is used for.

A wide cross-sec­tion of lo­cal sur­geons ben­e­fit­ed from the sem­i­nar in­clud­ing those who are breast sur­geons, urol­o­gists, ob­ste­tri­cians, gy­nae­col­o­gists, car­dio­tho­racic and neu­ro­sur­geons.

Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er at West Shore Med­ical Joanne Achille-Zamore told Guardian Me­dia that T&T must keep up with the chang­ing trends with­in the med­ical in­dus­try to bet­ter serve its pa­tients. She said, “Every­body is in­ter­est­ed and the sur­geons are very ex­cit­ed. It is where the med­ical field is mov­ing, so let’s be at the front edge of it. Let’s be where the likes of Eu­rope is. The ques­tion now is; how can we in­tro­duce this type of surgery to the coun­try? This ro­bot can be moved be­tween hos­pi­tals, it can be shared with hos­pi­tals.”

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from West Shore Med­ical, the de­vel­op­ing world of­ten faces health­care chal­lenges stem­ming from lim­it­ed ac­cess to mod­ern med­ical tech­nol­o­gy and qual­i­ty care. King added, “Our fo­cus on ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy, pre­ven­ta­tive care, and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment is re­shap­ing the health­care land­scape, and we are de­ter­mined to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble care for our pa­tients.” He said that in­cludes forg­ing glob­al part­ner­ships with tech­nol­o­gy, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and not-for-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO).

The hos­pi­tal added that its sem­i­nar is part of its “com­mit­ment to im­ple­ment­ing state-of-the-art med­ical tech­nol­o­gy” and that means “pa­tients now have ac­cess to di­ag­nos­tic tools, treat­ment op­tions, and surg­eries that were once un­avail­able lo­cal­ly. This leads to quick­er di­ag­noses, more ef­fec­tive treat­ments, and im­proved pa­tient out­comes’’.