St. John Addolarata, technological innovation with robotic surgery

At San Giovanni Addolorata in Rome, a virtuous collaboration between the UOSD General Surgery with short robotic technique and the Telemedicine Service has been in place for about 3 months. With this collaboration, we intend to ensure that the patient operated on at our facility is taken care of in a way that allows a shorter hospital stay and an accurate follow-up dedicated.

In brief, the procedure applied.

The patient is operated on using the robotic technique, which is characterized by extremely sophisticated technological instrumentation, machinery that allows surgery with thin, miniaturized instruments capable of reproducing the movements of the surgeon’s hand. St. John’s was the first hospital in Lazio to install the Da Vinci Robot: since 2007, more than 3.000 surgeries performed.

After a short hospital stay, the patient leaves the hospital in protected discharge and is monitored remotely from his or her home thanks to the Telemedicine service. The discharged patient is given instrumentation consisting of devices that connect wirelessly to a smartphone through which all the parameters the patient sends from home are monitored: electrocardiogram, blood pressure, blood sugar, saturation. Add to that the possibility of a live consultation with the surgeon who performed the surgery.

The advantages for the patient followed by telemedicine are a shorter postoperative stay, living in a protected environment as is one’s own home, and above all the security and peace of mind of being followed by a specialized public health center.

To date, 10 patients have been treated by Robotic Surgery associated with Telemedicine; of these, only for 1, due to the alteration of the parameters sent, it was necessary to return to the hospital.