White Plains Hospital—the first Westchester-based community facility to use robotic-assisted surgery, back in 2005—has now become the first county hospital to acquire two new-generation da Vinci Xi Surgical System robots, which help skilled surgeons increase their precision, whether by using the small tools attached to the robot’s arms or by utilizing its vision system to enhance their own. Patients who undergo robot-assisted surgery often have shorter hospital stays, less scarring, and decreased pain, meaning a shorter recovery time compared to traditional methods.
The Xi System in particular offers several innovations that ensure operations are not only more precise, but less invasive, including joints with an increase in range of motion, the addition of an overheard arm that makes more positions accessible, and higher visual definition in the endoscope.
White Plains Hospital hopes to utilize the Xi models in performing nearly 2,500 surgeries, including gallbladder removal, hysterectomy, and head-cancer surgery. In fact, the Xis have already helped Dr. Kimberly Yee (seen above) perform a successful laparoscopic recto sigmoid resection, WPH’s first procedure with the state-of-the-art da Vinci’s, and fortunately for Westchester residents, the first of many.
