A robotic surgeon with five arms is the newest medical team member to join Maimonides Medical Center help doctors perform surgeries with more precision. 

  Borovich, a senior OBGYN fellow, said he gets to use the machine about three to four times a day. 

  "It allows me to do surgeries that, probably, 10-, 15-years-ago, would be done by people who've been operating for 20 years,” Borovich said. 

 

The machine is connected to a monitor that gives the surgeon an up-close view of the surface they are working on. A small camera on one of the arms allows them to see with precision. 

 "What it means for the patient is less invasive, less blood loss, less pain, better functional outcomes,” said Dr. David Silver, chief of urology with the medical center.

 

Maimonides Medical Center now has five surgical robots, three of which arrived back in May. The medical professionals praise the robots' ability to perform minimally invasive surgeries with incisions that can be as small as an inch. 

 "Some of the operations we do, like removing a portion of a kidney or removing a prostate [have changed] from operations where a patient would stay five days right after surgery to drive-by operations where they come in the morning and go home in the afternoon," said Silver. 

 

The surgeons demonstrated the effectiveness of the robot, on display near the lobby area, with an ‘Operation’ board game and a banana. With the ‘Operation’ board game, the objective was to get small items out of the gameboard crevices with the small pincers. Each arm takes on a separate role in the process. 

If you consider getting robotic-assisted surgery, Silver says health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid do cover these procedures.