The Catalyst Issue 13 | Winter/Spring 2012 | Page 34

Speed and Light continued

of this machine.” Dr. Santiago says,
“It actually gives you great images that
would have looked grainier in a prior
generation of CT scanner.”
The King’s Daughters Foundation
gift has made all the difference.
“Without philanthropy, bringing this
type of technology to benefit children
would be more difficult because it
requires a large investment. It’s fantastic
to know that level of giving is within the
community,” says Mr. Davis. “It serves
as testimony to the collaborative efforts
among McLane Children’s Hospital,
Scott & White Hospital - Temple,
Scott & White radiology leadership, a
community foundation, and Siemens to
bring this all together.”

Work of art:
da Vinci Surgical System
Scott & White physicians have
performed more than 800 robotassisted laparoscopic surgeries—

Dr. Kristofer Wagner credits the new
generation da Vinci Surgical System for
allowing Scott & White surgeons to see
tissues in a new way.

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The Catalyst Winter/Spring 12 | sw.org

primarily for treating kidney, prostate,
and reproductive issues—since the
organization acquired its first da
Vinci Robotic System in 2005. The
technology allows greater precision,
and fewer incisions, resulting in faster
patient recovery times. With robotassisted systems, a surgeon performing
a procedure sits at a computer console
to precisely manipulate surgical
instruments mounted on the arm of
a robot. “Your hand movements are
translated into instrument movements
inside the patient,” says Kristofer R.
Wagner, MD, director of robotic
surgery at Scott & White Healthcare,
and assistant professor of surgery at the
Texas A&M Health Science Center
College of Medicine. “The instruments
move only under the surgeon’s control,”
he says, “so the surgeon is always in
command of the patient’s care.”
Purchased last fall, the newgeneration da Vinci has an exclusive
fluorescence imaging feature that uses
a near-infrared wavelength of light. “It
allows surgeons to see tissues in a new
way, not possible with normal white
light,” says Dr. Wagner. A special dye
injected into the bloodstream during
surgery will glow bright green under
this light, similar to the way certain
colors appear under a black light. “You
can assess various tissues or organs for
blood flow,” Dr. Wagner says.
Scott & White urologists, including
Dr. Wagner and Patrick Lowry, MD,
assistant professor of surgery at the
Texas A&M Health Science Center

College of Medicine, are using
this technology to perform partial
nephrectomies, surgeries that remove
kidney tumors without removing the
entire organ. Prior to fluorescence
imaging, surgeons would clamp off the
blood flow to the kidney to prevent
bleeding during surgery, but the loss of
blood flow also could injure the kidney.
With fluorescence, surgeons can
clamp the blood supply to only the
cancerous portion of the kidney.
“Before we start cutting, we know it
[the kidney] is not going to bleed, and
that blood is flowing to the rest of the
kidney,” Dr. Wagner says. “In the past,
we haven’t been able to assess that.”
With the new da Vinci system,
Scott & White also can offer a wider
array of robot-assisted surgeries,
including gynecological, thoracic, and
general surgery, Dr. Wagner says. “The
ease of set-up and maneuverability of
this new machine have allowed a number
of other surgeons in other specialties to
start using this technology.” This means
more patients undergoing routine
procedures will be candidates for robotassisted surgery and will benefit from
this minimally invasive approach.
Dr. Wagner says that more dyes
similar to the fluorescence will likely
come onto the market soon and will
make it easier for physicians to see other
types of tissues, or less visible forms of
cancer. “The potential for what may
be available for other tissue- or diseasespecific fluorescent dyes is huge,”
he says. n