Tackling cancer the hi-tech way
[caption id="attachment_236964" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Theatre staff watch monitors as the arms of the surgical robot remove a cancerous prostate gland from a patient.
Picture: Supplied[/caption]
The verdict is still out on what causes prostate cancer, and it is not known why, on a global scale, black men are more susceptible than whites.
Bra Hugh Masekela was diagnosed in 2008 and died last week. Archbishop Desmond Tutu also has prostate cancer. The heartening news is that, when detected early, five-year survival rates are 98%.
“Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in South African men – one in seven men develop it,” Wits academic head of urology Professor Mohamed Haffejee said.
People diagnosed can choose to do nothing about it – it is a probability game called watchful waiting.
“Almost 50% of cases are low-risk and slow-growing,” Haffejee said.
“Men can die with prostate cancer, but not from prostate cancer.”
There is a however – if it is not removed, it can spread through lymph nodes and metastasise in the bones, causing painful fractures.
Although radiation therapy is advised for the elderly and infirm, urologists recommend robotic prostate surgery to remove the prostate gland if the cancer has not spread.
“It is the most effective way to remove a cancerous prostate,” acclaimed urologist and consultant adviser in robotic surgery to Netcare hospitals, Dr Greg Boustead, said.
“Unlike open surgery, it is minimally invasive. Patients can go home in a day or two and be back at work in a few weeks.”
The robot is a mammoth centrepiece resembling a giant octopus. Its four arms are covered in plastic sleeves. Everything else is draped and wrapped and protected.
The mound underneath a sheet, tipped head-down at 45°, is the patient. He can barely be discerned because of the drapes, and because there is a team sitting around and watching – not him but flat monitors displaying the activity inside his abdomen.
The shrouded figure hunched over a console against a wall at the back of the theatre is the surgeon, one of a select group of specialists Boustead is training in robotic surgery.
A hi-tech procedure is under way. The giant octopus has its tentacle arms deep inside the patient’s belly. The robot has a choice of scalpels, needle-holders, forceps and scissors to make incisions, remove organs and close incision points.
They are tiny instruments, working inside the cavity where a surgeon’s hands would struggle to flex.
“The robot’s precision and the 3-D image with 10-times magnification, helps the surgeon access cancerous areas deep in the pelvis,” Boustead said.
“These can be difficult to reach in open surgery and are sometimes left behind.”
The operation ends 90 minutes later. The patient, employed at a mining company in Emalahleni, has been given his quality of life back.
There are five surgical robots in South Africa, including one in Port Elizabeth.
Longstanding political activist Mkhuseli Jack underwent the surgery in a private hospital in Port Elizabeth last week. He said the lifesaving surgery that spared him the trauma of radiation therapy had been a great success.
