Robotic surgery really means robot-assisted surgery. The robot allows your doctor to make smaller, more precise incisions that cause less trauma.

Your doctor controls the robot from a computer console. A camera attached to the robot broadcasts high-definition video to a monitor at the doctor's console. The doctor operates the instruments and camera using hand controls and foot pedals.

The robot has greater range-of-motion than a human's hands and the camera allows the doctor to zoom in much closer than the human eye could see.

At Duke, we use the da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Surgical. We have two robots at Duke University Hospital and one each at Durham Regional Hospital and Duke Raleigh Hospital. (Learn more about the da Vinci system at davincisurgery.com.)

Duke Robotic Surgery Team
(Click image to enlarge.)We got our first robot in 2002 and hundreds of patients have come here from around the state and the country to have robotic surgeries. Today Duke doctors have the most experience in North Carolina in robotic prostatectomies and the most experience in the world in robotic sacrocolpopexy (the procedure to repair pelvic prolapse).

Conditions Treated

We use our robots for gynecology and urology surgeries.

Gynecology

• Endometrial cancer
• Cervical cancer
• Ovarian cancer
• Sacrocolpopexy
• Hysterectomy
• Myomectomy
• Radical hysterectomy
• Lymph node dissections

Urology

• Prostatectomy
• Kidney surgery