The Stokes Centre of Urology team at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust is breaking records and breaking new ground in prostate cancer surgery. Wissam Abou-Chedid, a Consultant Surgeon at the Trust, and a Prostate Cancer UK Clinical Champion, speaks to CSJ about the potential impact these advances could have if adopted across the UK.
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the UK. Globally, more than 1.4 million men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year. Surgical removal of the prostate, or radical prostatectomy, remains one of the gold standard treatments of choice for men with clinically significant localised prostate cancer. Increasingly, the procedure is performed using minimally invasive approaches using robotic technology such as the Da Vinci. The approach helps to reduce blood loss during surgery, minimises side effects and shortens the length of hospital stay for patients.
The Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust is one of the top three hospitals in the country performing surgical procedures using minimally invasive robotic procedures and boasts a world record for the most robot-assisted radical prostatectomies (RARP) performed in a single day. Surgeons at the Trust have been performing robot-assisted procedures for more than a decade and, in February of this year, the urology team reported that they had completed their 4,000th robotic-assisted procedure. Across the whole Trust, the number of operations using robot technology reached 7,500.
In addition to achieving these impressive milestones, the Trust has pioneered some innovative approaches that are maximising efficiency, reducing waiting lists, improving patient outcomes, increasing patient satisfaction, and improving sustainability.
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