Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on November 2, 2019 dedicated the robotic surgery facility in the Safdarjung Hospital (SJH) New Delhi to the Nation .
Safdarjang Hospital is one of the biggest tertiary care referral centre of India, under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare catering to all poor patients of uro-oncological cancers like prostate, kidney, bladder cancers and kidney failures, from different parts of country.
First Central Government hospital in India
It is also the first Central Government hospital in India to start this latest Robot Surgery facility for all poor patients for free. Robotic surgery has the advantage of providing minimally invasive surgery, reducing significantly the morbidity & mortality of critically ill, cancer and kidney failure patients. The Robotic system provides 7 degrees of freedom, 3-D vision, 10 times magnification and better dissection with more precision. The operating time also decreases resulting in improvement in turnover of patients and decrease in waiting list of patients for surgery significantly.
Already 25 surgeries have been done using robotic system including prostate, kidney, bladder cancers and advanced reconstructive surgeries by Dr Anup Kumar, Head of Department (HOD), Urology and Renal Transplant, SJH and VMMC.
SJH has dedicated 21 modular operation theatres, including 24×7 two dedicated renal transplant OTs and a dedicated Robotic OT for Kidney Failure and Urology cancers, for poor patients of India.
Dr. Harsh Vardhan said that the Department of Urology and Renal Transplant of SJH has already started the First International LIVE 3-D Laparoscopic Surgeries Web Cast, showing complex uro-oncology and reconstructive surgeries, twice in a month. This has been integrated with the E-Health online education programme of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare which is now connected with 52 Medical colleges across India. This is the first such program in Urology in India. The department is going to start international LIVE webcast of robotic surgeries from the second week of November, 2019. A National Robotic training centre has also been set up for training of young doctors.
