By Eileen Buckley
Buffalo, NY – Less invasive surgery is now being offered from some cancer patients. The Roswell Park Cancer Institute now has a Minimally Invasive Surgical Center.
Inside Roswell Park's new surgical suite, Dr. Todd Demmy demonstrates voice activated equipment. Surgeons are now equipped with pencil-sized cameras, instruments and computerized medical devices to operate on cancer patient.
"We have all these monitors that can be put into different positions so the surgeons can see," Demmy said. "We have equipment that can run by voice command and we have it all integrated so we can show the images to people not just in the room, but other areas around the hospital or even around the country if we wanted to."
Roswell Park surgeons can now make small incisions to perform certain cancer surgeries. Surgeon Dr. Borish Kuvshinoff says it improves a patient's outcome.
"It reduces pain, recovery time, by minimizing the effects of the larger, traditional incisions," Kuvshinoff said.
One Western New Yorker has already experienced the less invasive surgery at Roswell Park. The Mayor of Lewiston, Richard Soluri, had a tumor on his pancreas.
"When Dr. Boris said he could conduct this minimally invasion and remove only what he needed to remove, there was no doubt that was the way I was going to go," Soluri said.
And with the new surgical procedure, doctors removed only the tail of his pancreas. Soluri was released just a few days after his surgery.
"I went to another doctor and he wanted to remove my entire pancreas. But that would have instantly rendered me as a diabetic. As it turns out, just losing the tail, I'm now just a borderline diabetic."
It's expected that 70 percent of the high volume surgery in the US will be performed with this new technique in the near future. But Roswell Park says, for its patients, the "future is now."