In a landmark medical advancement and a first in North America and Europe, Dr. Sam Atallah and team have just completed the first successful fully robotic surgery to remove a precancerous growth from the lower intestinal tract.
The first of its kind surgery at Endo-Surgical Center of Florida in east Orlando “allows surgeons to remove precancerous growths within the large bowel without having to resort to radical surgery,” said world renowned colorectal surgeon Dr. Sam Atallah of Digestive and Liver Center of Florida.
Only three sites were chosen for the FDA-approved trial, the other two at the University of Texas and the University of Nevada.
The new, state-of-the-art technology, developed by ColubrisMx, Inc. in Houston, will with further testing, allow removal of growths further up in the colon because of it non-linear design.
This is not the first technology breakthrough by the Colorectal Surgery Department at Digestive and Liver Center. Dr. Atallah performed the world's first TAMIS operation in Winter Park, FL on June 30, 2009 creating a new approach to treating rectal cancers and polyps, now being practiced in more than 50 countries. Dr. Atallah pioneered robotic transanal surgery and was the first in the world to perform this technique using the da Vinci Surgical System. He is one of the leaders in advanced technology for rectal cancer surgery and has developed the technique of stereotactic navigation for transanal total mesorectal excision (taTME) — an important step forward in the evolution of computer-assisted surgery.