At the end of last year, there was tension in the operating room as the surgery of a prostate cancer..
Yoo Dal-san, Director of Asan Robot Center in Seoul
Major cancer, pediatric seriousness, obstetrics and gynecology
Over 40,000 surgeries in 18 years
Best medical technology and cooperation system
At the end of last year, there was tension in the operating room as the surgery of a prostate cancer patient A, an operating room at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, fell into trouble. The lesions that were abnormally expanded due to cancer cells invading the pericardium and accumulating pericardial fluid were in adhesion with major organs such as rectums. Medical staff carefully separated the tissue by securing a view with a robotic arm in a narrow pelvic cavity, but difficult tasks continued to make their hands sweat.
At 9 p.m., when the surgery was over 6 hours, the crisis of concern came. Fine damage to the rectum occurred while separating the adhesion area. It was a moment of crisis, but the medical staff did not falter. The multi-disciplinary cooperation system, which has been established for a long time by Asan Medical Center in Seoul, was immediately activated.
Yoo Dal-san, director of the Robot Surgery Center at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, who was in charge of the conduction at the time, said, “As soon as I confirmed the rectal damage, I asked for cooperation from the colorectal anastomosis surgery department. He recalled that although it is not easy to put robotic surgery in the middle of the surgery site of other medical departments, a fellow professor was able to join because several departments internalized techniques.
The experts, who teamed up, successfully resected the tumor at the same time as restoring the damaged area, and A was discharged three weeks later without complications. Director Yoo said, “The number of 40,000 robotic surgeries is not just a record of many surgeries, but it means that various medical departments have built trust by solving numerous unexpected situations together. This accumulated experience becomes a compass to find the safest way for patients.”
Since introducing robotic surgery in 2007, Asan Medical Center in Seoul has accumulated 40,000 cases in 18 years. It took 10 years to reach the initial 10,000 cases, but since then, the pace has been steep, and 20,000 cases have recently been added in four years. Director Yoo said, “Now, robotic surgery has evolved from verifying whether it is possible to treat it to thinking about how to do it more elaborately.” “The cumulative number of cases in Asia is that the treatment experience and system completion have exceeded a certain level.”
“If you don’t have skills, you can’t stand the operating table.”
Data-driven digital innovation will make it the world’s best hospital
Competitiveness does not stop at quantitative expansion. Surgery that requires dissection in narrow spaces such as prostate cancer and kidney cancer, micro-surgery for children with small organs, obstetric surgery that requires preserving fertility while minimizing scars, and high-level organ transplantation have been expanded in all directions.
Not everyone can stand on the operating table. Medical staff who have completed the training center training course will be given temporary authority for robotic surgery, and formal surgical authority will only be granted if they have passed the “Peer Review” based on actual surgical images. Director Yoo said, “If you have not performed robotic surgery for three years, your authority will be suspended. If you don’t maintain your proficiency, you can’t stand on the operating table,” he said.
The results of simultaneous management of personnel and systems led to high productivity. According to the hospital, there are more than 600 operations per robot per year. This is the result of increasing the utilization of equipment by establishing a system in which skilled surgical teams engage organically and standardizing the process before and after surgery. “The protocol has been accumulated to the extent that doctors, doctors, and nurses who assist it can share the next step without separate instructions,” Director Yoo said. “This is why overseas medical staff visit not only to learn the technique but also the operation method itself.”
Director Yoo cited the combination with medical artificial intelligence (AI) as the next step in robotic surgery. Surgery is more advantageous for technology application as the learning environment is simpler and variables are controlled to some extent than autonomous driving on the road, he said. “In the next three years, certain surgical stages will be automated.” “Technology progress will be a more powerful weapon for our hospitals,” he added.
Asan Medical Center in Seoul will focus on digital innovation that converts the entire surgical process to data-based in the future. “As of 2025, about 47% of all surgeries in the United States are performed by robots, but Korea is less than 20%,” Director Yoo said. “As the related market grows by 25% every year, our hospital will operate more than 30 devices in 10 years.” He added, “We will establish an environment where data can be used in real time through remodeling of the operating room, and based on this, we will establish the fourth specialized hospital-level surgical platform after cancer, heart, and children’s hospitals.”
