SARASOTA, Fla. — Sarasota Memorial Hospital helped pioneer robotic surgery in the 1990s and so did Dr. Robert Carey.
"Robotic surgery has provided very reliable outcomes for our patients facing a scary diagnosis of prostate cancer,” said Carey.
The hospital had the first “da Vinci” surgical robot in Florida and has helped shape the technology and training for all robotic surgery.
Now Dr. Carey, a urologist at the SMH, is being honored by Intuitive Surgical – maker of the da Vince Robotic Surgical System –after reaching a milestone achieved by only a handful of Florida surgeons of performing more than 2,000 life-saving prostate cancer removal surgeries all by using the robot.
Carey says robots are so much more reliable than open incision surgery with faster healing time and much higher cure rates.
"When we were trying to do these surgeries through an open incision deep in the pelvis. The results might be good for one patient but not for another patient and it was hard to predict, and now it is extremely reliable," said Carey.
Carey says this robotic technology has helped the death rate after prostate cancer removal surgery move to less than 1%.
