Northwest Community Hospital marks 5,000th robotic surgery

It wasn't that long ago when hospitals performed only open surgeries requiring large incisions and extended recovery times to deal with pain.

Then came laparoscopy - using smaller incisions and the aid of a camera.

Now the medical field is building on that with the use of high-tech robots to hold surgical instruments and zoom in and out with a 3-D camera - all while the surgeon is holding video game-like controllers 10 feet away from the operating table.

Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights has been doing more and more of those surgeries. On Wednesday, the hospital celebrated its 5,000th surgery using the da Vinci robot, the patented creation of California-based Intuitive Surgical.

The hospital acquired its first such machine in 2007 but recently has seen exponential growth in the number of surgeries performed with it - 850 alone since last October. It can be used for specialties like gynecology to urology and anything in the chest and abdominal cavities.

"The patients that would have had four days in the hospital and had eight weeks of recovery now go home within four hours after their surgery, take pain medication for two days and they can run a mile two weeks after their surgery," said Dr. Michelle Luthringshausen, the hospital's medical director of robotic surgery. "It's a rapid recovery."

The hospital's 5,000th patient, Martha Ulmer, actually had two robotic procedures done on the same day by two surgeons. The 70-year-old Romeoville resident had a hiatal hernia and malignant tumor, requiring one doctor to pull her stomach down from her chest, then another doctor to remove the tumor.

Both doctors, oncology surgeon Malcolm Bilimoria and thoracic surgeon Gary Chmielewski, took turns at the controls of the da Vinci robot over the course of three hours on July 13.

Ulmer walked out of the hospital the next day and says all the pain was gone within a week. She's able to eat and walk better and breathe easier.

"It was kind of cool to think about the robotic arms and it was especially great that it was only laparoscopic because they're just tiny incisions," she said. "I feel brand new. I feel like a new person."

The hospital has three robotic machines and plans to trade out its oldest model with a newer one this fall.