Children in crisis: Hadassah’s robotics to the rescue
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Pioneering dual robot operation changes 11-year old boy’s life
An 11-year-old boy with serious spinal injuries has become the second patient to successfully undergo dual robotic surgery pioneered by the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
The first-of-its-kind dual robot operation made headlines last year, after it was successfully performed on a man who had sustained a serious back injury.
This time the operation was performed on an 11-year old boy named Joseph, who could not move his legs as a result of a serious accident that saw him break vertebrae close to his pelvis; the area that provides the strongest support for a child’s back. The injury could have meant Joseph would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair as a paraplegic.
Performed for the first time on a child, the surgery – using two robots named Zeego and Renaissance – was a success and Joseph is now in rehabilitation, looking forward to an active future.
This operation was first performed last year on 42-year old Aaron Schwarz, who was severely injured when a heavy wall of steel fell on him at work.
Suffering six broken vertebrae and leg fractures in two places, Mr Schwartz was brought to the underground hybrid operating room in Hadassah Hospital. “In the hybrid room are two robots,” explains Prof. Meir Liebergall, head of Hadassah’s Orthopedic Department. “The more innovative of the two is the Zeego. It allows three-dimensional imagining while a surgeon is operating–which is unusual during surgery. This lets the surgeon know exactly where each organ is, and he no longer has to rely on CAT scans before surgery and x-rays after the surgery. The two robots communicated with each other during the surgery, when 11 orthopedic screws were inserted with precision, saving the patient’s life.”
For more than 100 years, Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem (www.hadassah-med.com) has been a leader in medicine and nursing in Israel, laying the foundation and setting the standards for the country’s modern health care system. The majority of medical breakthroughs in Israel have taken place there. With more than 130 departments and clinics, Hadassah-Ein Kerem provides Israel’s most advanced diagnostic and therapeutic services for the local and national population and a significant number of international patients.
iMER (www.imer.biz) is the international patients office of Hadassah. iMER operates in Cyprus, Austria, Germany, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia and in cooperation with Hadassah, offers patients assessment services, the preparation of a medical plan and referral to the appropriate Hadassah units.
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