Central Peninsula Hospital | Pulse | Winter 2019

2 Central Peninsula Hospital Central Peninsula Hospital (CPH) is proud to offer our community the latest in state-of- the-art technology: minimally invasive robotic surgery. In September 2018, the hospital administration began the process to pur- chase a da Vinci surgical robot. The request to purchase the robot originated from surgeons at CPH. The request was approved by the hos- pital board and the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly in late October and was delivered to CPH in early December 2018. Some of you might ask: What exactly is a surgical robot? The surgeries are performed by board-certified physicians using the da Vinci Surgical System that is often called a robot. While it is called a robot, it does not act on its own and is under the control of the surgeon 100 percent of the time. The da Vinci Xi Surgical System has two ma- jor sections that are connected: The tower or patient cart, which is posi- tioned directly over the patient during surgery, has four arms—three that can hold many different types of surgical instruments and one used for the 3-D high-definition (HD) camera. The console is where the surgeon com- fortably sits to control the four arms of the tower while viewing the inside of the surgical site on a 3-D HD monitor. The surgeon ma- nipulates the robot arms by using two master controls that provide precise delicate move- ments of the instruments with advanced dexterity. The rest of the surgical team near the patient view and monitor the surgery through additional 2-D video screens that show the same view the surgeon is seeing in 3-D. We believe that robot-assisted surgery is be- coming the standard of care for many surgical procedures. It offers patients many potential benefits, including minimal scarring, quicker recovery, less pain and shorter hospital stays. The da Vinci Xi Surgical System is the fourth generation of the robot and offers many improvements over prior models. With the latest developments, we decided that now was the time to provide robot-assisted surgery to patients in our community. Another service you don’t have to leave home to receive! FOUNDAT I ON Robotic surgery— now close to home Rick Davis, CEO Central Peninsula Hospital A MESSAGE FROM THE CEO Want to help make a difference? Call the Foundation at 907-714-4626 or visit www.giving heals.org . Photo by Brian Beard