Health care in Santa Barbara is taking a step into the future.
Sansum Clinic has revealed its newest tool to offer better outpatient care at its surgery center with the Intuitive da Vinci 5, a robotic surgical system that can be used to perform safer and faster operations.
The surgical system is part of the clinic’s goal of improving outpatient care by making the process easier for patients. Along with the da Vinci robot, Sansum Clinic has improved and expanded the Foothill Surgery Center.
Tom Parra, the area administrator for the surgery division, said the new features will allow the clinic to provide better outpatient care. Parra explained that the clinic will be able to make the process easier and quicker for patients.
“Surgery can be scary. It is scary for patients. Us being able to (provide) kind of a concierge level of service to our patients helps bring that anxiety down,” Parra said.
He also credited Sutter Health for helping fund part of the improvements and showing it was invested in providing care to the community. Sansum Clinic was acquired by Sutter Health in 2023.
The robot cost $3 million and was purchased with local donations and funds from Sutter Health. One anonymous donor gifted the clinic $1 million, and other local donors raised $675,000 toward the purchase.
Sutter Health provided $1.3 million for the purchase of the robot.
The Foothill Surgery Center has added three new operating rooms in addition to the da Vinci robot. The center now has seven operating rooms in total, including one that is equipped for minimally invasive spinal surgery.
The center also added a new nursing station and 22 rooms for patients recovering from surgery. Four rooms are dedicated to patients who need more than 23 hours to recover.
The clinic revealed the new robotic system during a demonstration at the Foothill Surgery Center on Friday. During the reveal, attendees were able to operate the robotic system and practice stitching up a fake wound.
The newest model of the da Vinci robot comes with 140 innovations and offers surgeons better vision, precision, and instrument control.
Charmian Dresel-Velasquez, an obstetrician gynecologist at the clinic, said the machine allows surgeons to use dime-size incisions rather than the traditional larger cuts.
“Previously, (if) your grandmother had a hysterectomy, that usually involved an incision halfway down her abdomen, and with that there was a high risk of infections, blood loss, the recoveries were slower, and people were not mobilized and moving until four weeks, even six weeks, after surgery,” Dresel-Velasquez explained.
“Whereas with this, the same day you have your major surgery, you have less blood loss, less infection and a faster recovery — so, much happier patients.”
Patients who are concerned about being operated on by the machine have little to worry about, according to Benjamin Wisner, a urogynecologist at the center.
The machine is controlled by a surgeon who has spent hundreds of hours practicing how to operate the machine and assisted in other procedures to gain experience.
“The robot only does exactly what the surgeon tells it to do,” Wisner said. “So, every movement of the hand and wrist that the surgeon does, the robot then does that.”
Another benefit of the da Vinci is that it can record surgeries and analyze how its operator performed based on the length of the procedure, speed and movements. Surgeons can review the videos and gain insight into how they performed compared to other surgeons with more experience.
The machine will be used for urology, gynecology, and general surgery.
