Surgeons at Guy’s and St Thomas’ beat the world record of successfully treating the most men with enlarged prostates in one day using a cutting-edge robotic technique.
Guy’s Hospital is the first NHS centre in central London to offer a pioneering treatment to help men who have a non-cancerous, enlarged prostate.
Aquablation Therapy is an incision-less procedure that uses an image-guided robotic arm. The arm holds a water jet to very precisely remove excess prostate tissue.
Guy’s hospital do a week’s worth of surgery in a day to beat backlog
While in mild cases this can be treated with medication, bigger prostates may require surgery to manage obstructive urinary symptoms.
A man with an enlarged prostate may feel like they need to urinate more often, and may find it difficult to empty their bladder completely. Some men have to have a catheter inserted into their bladder while waiting for treatment, which can affect their quality of life.
The surgical team at the central London hospital performed the procedure on ten patients in one day – the most of any hospital in the world.
Conventional surgery for treating this would be using a laser technology, but this procedure can take up to three hours for one patient.
Aquablation can be done more quickly, with the average procedure taking around 40 minutes. As the system is robotic, it is also more precise and the outcomes for patients are more predictable and most patients should be able to leave hospital in the following day or two.
Aquablation also improves the preservation of sexual function and urinary continence.
This new treatment was first used in Guy’s Hospital in July this year, and since then surgeons there have successfully treated more than thirty men with it.
Retired dentist John Wade, 69, was one of the first Aquablation patients at Guy’s Hospital, following previous prostate surgery which didn’t fully resolve his issue.
John, from Norwich in Norfolk, said: “My surgeon was wonderful. He explained over the phone about Aquablation and said he could get me on the list.
“I turned up on the Sunday, had the treatment and stayed in hospital for 24 hours before I was discharged. My recovery has been good and my quality of life has improved.
“This procedure was so much ‘kinder’ to me physically than the one I had had previously. This is medicine moving forwards – it was first class.”
Rick Popert and Jonathan Noël, consultant urological surgeons at Guy’s and St Thomas’, along with their surgical teams have been using Aquablation to help tackle a backlog of patients waiting for treatment.
For the latest surgeries, using the efficient High Intensity Theatre (HIT) list technique pioneered at Guy’s and St Thomas’, Mr Popert and Mr Noël’s team operated on ten patients with one Aquabeam robotic system. This was done across two operating theatres and using three teams of theatre staff.
Mr Popert said: “I’m delighted that John has made good progress. Aquablation offers lots of improvements for people like John who have enlarged prostates.
“Using this technique we can do twice the number of patients we’re able to do with more conventional surgery, and it’s easier and quicker to train more surgeons to be able to do it. This enables us to offer more patients better surgery.
“I am immensely proud of the incredible effort from the whole team.
“These HIT List techniques can be applied to all surgical specialties. They could be used throughout the NHS to help tackle the rising tide of surgical waiting lists.”
This was the 20th HIT list undertaken at Guy’s and St Thomas’. More than 370 patients have been operated on across nine surgical specialties. The system was developed by Dr Imran Ahmad, consultant anaesthetist and deputy clinical director for anaesthesia and theatres at Guy’s and St Thomas’.
Dr Ahmad said: “We were very excited to combine the innovation of HIT lists with the cutting edge technology of Aquablation prostate surgery and operate on a record number of patients in one day.”
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