Dr. Jaydeep Palep | For The First Time In Western India: Application of Robotic Surgery in Bariatrics

    Case:
    A 52 year old homemaker was suffering from hypothyroidism since the last eight years and was taking treatment from an endocrinologist for the same. She came to us with the complaints of morbid obesity and severe knee joint pains with progressive difficulty in walking over the last 5 years.

    Past History:
    She had started putting on weight 8 years ago after her thyroid problem was diagnosed. She was habituated to attending parties and overeating through out the day. She gradually almost stopped walking since the last one year and restricted her physical activity to the bare minimum (like going to the bathroom/kitchen/dining) not even doing any household chores like she used to in the past.

    She tried losing weight by enrolling herself in various diet and weight loss programs in her neighborhood, losing a few kilos but going on a rebound and putting on more than what she started off with. She was around 80 kg eight years ago.

    Present Scenario:
    She had come to Dr. Vinay Joshi, Consultant - Joint Replacement Surgeon, Kokilaben Hospital, Mumbai, for the treatment of her knee joints (L>R), who in turn referred her to Dr. Jaydeep Palep, Consultant - Robotic & Laparoscopic Bariatric and GI Surgeon, Kokilaben Hospital, Mumbai. She is 5ft 1inch tall and came to us with a weight of 115 kg and a BMI of 46.7kg/m2.

    Treatment Offered:
    She was counselled and put on a pre op 10 day liquid diet in preparation for a bariatric surgery. A robotic mini gastric bypass (which is a restrictive & malabsorptive procedure) was performed using the da Vinci Si HD Surgical Robot. This is the first time that a robot has been used for a weight loss surgery in Western India; traditionally this surgery has been done by laparoscopy over the last three decades across the globe.

    The robotic technology incorporated for bariatrics gives a significant advantage over conventional laparoscopy due to various reasons,

    • Foremost being the 3D vision it gives inside the body
    • Intuitive movements of the robotic instruments
    • And the biggest advantage being the ability of the robotic arms to provide an assistance in abdominal wall lift during the surgery which is not possible in traditional laparoscopy technique that, in a severely obese patient, can cause a lot of problems to the operating surgeon like getting a good field to operate in a crowded fatty abdomen.