To da Vinci or not

I was at probably the best prostate cancer symposium last week in Orlando.

The outlook for up to the year 2020 was robotic surgery to be the mainstay of therapy.

Dr Jay Smith of Vanderbilt gave a nice talk no his outstanding robotic results.

The reason why pelvic lymphadenectomy was stopped was due to the earlier diagnosis of cancer.

I have done over 120 lap (robotic) lymphadenectomies in the last 2 years as part of my 240 daVinci prostatectomy surgeries.

I was involved with HIFU research while I was a resident at Indiana University and was not impressed with the results.

In my opinion, robotic will loose out to gene therapy at some point. Not in the next 15 years however.