Space-Age Gastric Bypass

By: NewsWire

About 100,000 Americans will go under the knife for gastric bypass surgery this year. It’s one of the most difficult surgeries for doctors to perform. Now a robot is making the surgery easier on both doctors and patients. More and more Americans are fighting the battle of the bulge… James Hampton has almost won his war. He’s lost more than 125 pounds!

“What it was like before the surgery? Painful, miserable, depressed,” he says.

Hampton used to weigh 460 pounds, but gastric bypass surgery gave him his life back. It was a success, but it was different than most procedures … His surgeon was a robot!

Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., are among the first in the country to perform a laparoscopic robotic gastric bypass. A surgeon sits at a special station and controls every move the robot makes.

“The robot actually does the surgery itself. So, we use the robot to pick up the intestine and run the intestines, and we use the robot to suture the intestine,” says Myriam Curet, M.D., a general surgeon at Stanford.

Dr. Curet says the robot uses more precise instruments and allows surgeons to see the organs in 3-D. It also reduces operating time. “The technology is great,” she says. “You know, an opportunity to do something that’s great for the patient in a way that makes it safer, easier, more precise.”

Now, Hampton is off the 14 medications he used to take and is a lot healthier. “I realized I could cross my legs,” he says … And that was just the beginning.

The robot costs about $1 million. Dr. Curet says there still needs to be research conducted to determine the cost effectiveness. Right now, there are about a dozen surgeons around the country who are using the robot for portions of the surgery, but Stanford is the only center that uses it for the entire operation.