Doctors in UP hospital perform robotic surgery to remove thyroid cancer

Doctors at Uttar Pradesh’s Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) have successfully operated on a 21-year-old woman, who was suffering from thyroid cancer, through robotic surgery.

The hospital based in Lucknow said in an official statement that it was “the first time in India that a cancerous thyroid gland was entirely removed through robotic surgery at a government institution”. The patient, who hails from the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, developed a lump in her neck, after which she was diagnosed at the city's Kamala Nehru Cancer Hospital. As surgery without making an incision in the throat was not possible due to complications, she was referred to the Lucknow hospital, Dr. Gyan Chand, the robotic thyroid surgeon at SGPGIMS, said in the statement.

Robotic surgery in cancer care is already underway in India. In July 2022, the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre (RGCI), a project of the Indraprastha Cancer Society and Research Centre, installed a "made in India surgical robotic system" in order to make robotic surgery more accessible to patients. The system, SSI-Mantra, has been devised by med-tech start-up SS Innovations.

While robotic surgery is not a new concept in India, its usage has been sporadic. Post-Covid-19, social distancing and higher risk of infection due to prolonged stays in hospitals forced hospitals and patients to opt for robotic surgeries as an alternative to traditional open surgeries, believe experts.

That said, experts claim that robotic surgeries are also cheaper, more advanced, and more efficient than the US FDA-approved Da Vinci system which was approved for use in India since early 2000s. In 2002, India’s first robotic cardiac surgery was conducted with the Da Vinci system, and the first urological surgery done in 2006.

According to a study published in the Indian Journal of Urology in 2020, there are currently 66 centres and 71 robotic installations as of July 2019, with more than 500 trained robotic surgeons in our country.

In January 2022, Sarvodaya Hospital Faridabad, performed a total knee replacement using a fully active joint replacement robot. More recently, in December, last year, Apollo Specialty Hospital doctors at Nellore, said the hospital has come up with a centre for robotic surgery that is available for knee replacement and other operations.