St Vincent’s Private Hospital is the first hospital in New South Wales only the second in the Southern Hemisphere to use the Da Vinci Robotic Surgical System, acquired for the St Vincent’s Campus. The system allows surgeons to use keyhole techniques for cardiac, urological and gynaecological procedures, among others. Operations can now be performed using just several small incisions. Once made, the cameras and robotic arms can be inserted. The operation is then performed by the surgeon working from a remote console with a three-dimensional view inside the patient.

These are just some of the benefits to patients:

• It is far less invasive than more traditional methods.
• Hospital stay times are greatly reduced.
• There is far less post-operative pain.
• There is less blood loss during operations.
• Risk of infection is greatly reduced.
• Recovery time is far quicker.

For the surgeons, the robot offers a greatly increased level of precision with no tremor from the robotic arms compared to the human hand. Also the cameras offer magnification over nine times greater than the human eye.

The state-of-the-art Da Vinci Robot, currently in use at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, was acquired for the St Vincent’s Campus after several years of fundraising by a former patient of the St Vincent’s Heart and Lung Transplantation Unit, John Davis.
John has worked tirelessly since 1998 to raise money for the project by organising his much-loved golf challenges and other activities. Over the last seven years John has raised over $1million towards the purchase of the DaVinci Robot.

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