Surgical learning curve for robotic surgery

Regardless of what procedure you choose and the skill of the surgeon or RO, EVERYONE has an off day/moment. Peyton Manning doesn't always have a great game. If you had to choose between a Peyton Manning or Russell Wilson, if they were comparable in surgical skill, most would go with Manning every single time, but he doesn't always perform well. Russell Wilson can be a better choice. A less experienced QB like Wilson had a much better game in the SuperBowl. These surgeries are personal SuperBowls for all of us. Yes, pick your Peyton Manning and hope he's on that day. If you choose your Russell Wilson the hope is the same.

BTW, what good are stats without the accompanying results? So what if your selected surgeon has passed some magical threshold. You have no idea what the outcome of his 600 surgeries is. He may have 600 guys out there walking around incontinent and totally ED'd for the rest of their lives. Each surgical procedure is as unique as our stories. No two are exactly the same. All it comes down to, in my opinion, is being fully persuaded what you've chosen was right for you.

My uro pushed a guy named, "Dr.Elie Benaim", for my surgery. His office was calling my house often after my dx. Yesterday, I decided to research who this guy was. He was certified in Venezuela and works in some what I would call questionable hospitals here in Big D. I had no clue about him until yesterday but I didn't even care enough to look into him because my uro told me "he knew a guy". That is something you tell someone when you have car trouble not a phrase that made me comfortable when it came to potentially leaving me sexless and peeing on myself for the rest of my life. MAYO CLINIC made sense to me just internally...hearing those two words. In my heart, I just knew that is where I was supposed to go and it would require flying 1000 miles, but that's what I did because it was my "one shot don't miss your chance to blow cuz opportunity knocks once in a lifetime" moment. I would've jumped a plane to Helsinki, Finland if I felt that was where I was supposed to go.

Also, NOTHING in life is as easily manipulatable as statistics. It is nice to hear "x" amount of procedures for sure and that all my patients are "doing great" but you don't know that. You have to just trust it's true. Like anything everything in life comes down to faith because you're never going to really know.

Dr. Elie Benaim may have been great but he didn't feel right for me. I went with my gut and like Highlander CFH (Chuck) ended up at Mayo and thrilled with my decision to fly there. It may not evoke the same peace for everyone, I'm just glad it did for me. I give full credit to the author of my faith for putting the peace in me to just "know" inside this was right for me.

Absolutely well said Inchoation!

Experience counts - especially for surgeons.
But then so does gut feel an extremely experienced surgeon might not be the right one for you.

My father was on a short holiday in India recently when his heart went into unstable angina. My sister, a physician, and I had to pick a doctor and a hospital to have the angiogram/angioplasty as he was not able to board a plane and fly back with his condition. Neither of us knew doctors in India. We narrowed it down to a very experienced interventional cardiologist (10,000 procedures) at the top hospital or a star interventional cardiologist who is internationally renowned who claimed to have done the most procedures in the world.

We picked the former. Both surgeons had a very large amount of experience. So other things came into play including the likelihood of the procedure being delayed due to the surgeon being in high demand, the quality of their respective hospitals, the way that the surgeons came across.

So getting a surgeon with 700 Ralp surgeries is important but outcomes of these surgeries and other factors do also come into play. As they should.

An

Finding surgeons with 1000 + operations, is one of the advantages of a large population base and, I say this reluctantly, the profit incentive with the American system. (Please -just stating a fact, not trying to spark a political debate.)

From what I understand, in Canada, even the most experienced surgeons may only have performed several hundred such operations. We don't really have urologists who only specialize in prostate operations and most will also deal with kidney, bladder and other urological operations. So they may have just as much operating hours but it is almost impossible for them to match the number of robotic prostate surgeries as their American counterparts who specialize in prostate disease.

When I was with my surgeon's scheduler arranging for a surgery date, I asked if Dr. Patel was a morning person, if so I wanted a morning surgery. He smiled and said,"Let me tell you something about Dr. Patel, he has done so many of these procedures that it really doesn't matter. His last surgery of the day is just as good as his first one".

And Dr. Patel does 6-8 surgeries a day, 4 days a week. He DOES perform all surgeries behind the console with the help of a great team. He always says WE, never takes full credit, a very humble man.

I asked Dr. Patel months later how he does it, doesn't he get fatigued at the latter part of the day. He said no, he never gets tired at the DaVinci machine.

Yes it is important to get a surgeon that has a lot of experience.

Bill from Florida