HADASSAH MEDICINE
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Hadassah Medical Organization’s new neuro-angiography suite
Science and Miracles Robotic surgery minimizes risk and improves outcomes By Wendy Elliman
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF HMO
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ombine medieval stories of miraculous healing of the sick with the banks of monitors, sensors and technological know-how in use at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, and what do you get? The cutting-edge operating room of today. First, the tales of miracles: A 21-year-old construction worker falls from a ladder and breaks his back. He spends 15 minutes in surgery at HMO and walks out of the hospital unaided three days later. An elderly rabbi, confined to a wheelchair for over a year, spends 20 minutes on Hadassah’s operating table. He, too, leaves within days on his own two feet. A stroke paralyzes the right side of a 42-year-old woman and robs her of speech. Her surgery at Hadassah lasts 14 minutes, and she is discharged later in the week, fully mobile and smiling. An 81-year-old woman from
Bethlehem has spent weeks at home, confined to bed by agonizing pain from a fractured spine. Elsewhere, she had been told that her age and heart condition preclude surgery. After an operation at Hadassah, she leaves pain free. “We treat patients like these every week,” said senior surgeon Dr. Josh Schroeder, director of Hadassah’s spinal deformity unit, who performs around 50 surgeries each month, about half of them using robotics. Less than two decades ago, no such treatment existed for many of these patients. At HMO today, utilizing robot technology and groundbreaking techniques developed at the medical organization as well as the new $6-million neuro-angiography suite in the Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower on Hadassah’s Ein Kerem campus, surgeons are able to minimize risk and perform complex healing techniques. MARCH/APRIL 2022
f the word “robot” brings to mind science fiction humanoid killers, it’s time for a reset. “Surgical robots aren’t super-smart, sentient, life-sized dolls,” said neurosurgeon Dr. José Cohen, director of interventional neurology at HMO, its endovascular neurosurgery unit and the neuro-angiography suite—the “mission control” of Hadassah’s robot-assisted brain and spinal surgery, with more than $1 million of its equipment donated by the United States Agency for International Development. “They’re machines with dexterous and sensitive mechanical arms built to manipulate cameras and surgical instruments.” And, he added, “they follow planning software meticulously programmed by surgeons.” The software that guides the robot minimizes human error and gives surgeons precise real-time control, with the robotic camera transmitting visual information more accurately than the human eye. This means that procedures once considered hazardous can now be performed at minimal risk, and interventions that once required open surgery can be minimally invasive, performed under local anesthetic in less than 20 minutes. The solution for the 21-year-old man who fell from a ladder and the elderly rabbi in the wheelchair, both of whom asked that their names not be used, was to connect their damaged vertebrae using spinal fusion. “With the robot acting as a kind of GPS, pinpointing the location to the millimeter, and screwing the tiny pedicles [spinal screws] into exactly the right place, we could operate percutaneously”—via minimally invasive needle puncture through the skin—“instead of hours of open surgery followed by weeks of hospitalization,” said Dr. Schroeder.
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