Shrewsbury trust passes robotic assisted surgery milestone

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), which runs Shropshire’s two acute hospitals, has completed more than 200 robotic assisted surgeries.

© Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust

© Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust

The trust, which runs Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, began using the da Vinci XI in June 2023 to assist with the treatment of colorectal, urological and gynaecological diseases.

The trust says the system is helping to reduce the length of time patients are spending in hospital following complex pelvic operations for cancer and non-cancerous conditions. Around 80% of patients having a robotic hysterectomy at SaTH go home the same day following their surgery and 95% go home within 24 hours.

Dr John Jones, executive medical director at SaTH, said: ‘Our highly skilled surgical teams have embraced this innovative technology and performed over 200 robotic surgery cases across a range of different specialties, which is a huge achievement.

‘We are seeing so many benefits including quicker recoveries, fewer complications and some patients no longer need to travel outside of the area for their procedures.'

Mr Adam Farquharson, who performs robotic surgery at SaTH, added: ‘As well as benefitting our patients, robotic assisted surgery has created a lot of enthusiasm in the trust and we now have an expert theatre team that carries out all of the robotic surgery cases.

‘We enjoy training the medical and nursing staff and it has attracted high calibre consultants to join us.'

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