Minimally Invasive Surgeries for Cancer

Physicians at Baptist may use minimally invasive techniques to address cancer in various areas of the body.

Cancer occurs when abnormal cells within the body grow invading and replacing normal tissue. Surgery related to cancer involves:

• diagnosis-determining the presence of cancer
• staging-determining how far cancer has spread
• treatment-surgical removal of cancerous tissue

Surgery may be used alone or in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

For diagnosis of cancer, often it is necessary to remove a small sample of the suspected tissue for evaluation. This process, called biopsy, can often be done using minimally invasive techniques including laparoscopy.

Laparoscopic biopsy and staging is frequently performed for cancers in the abdomen and pelvis, including evaluation of adjacent lymph nodes.

For patients with prostate cancer, physicians may use the da Vinci™ Surgical System to perform a radical prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate gland). The system is robotic technology that provides the surgeon with a 3-D image of the surgical field with 10x magnification. The surgeon uses master controls to robotic surgical instruments inside the patient that convey the surgeon's hand, wrist and finger movements into precise, real-time movements. The system scales down the movements of the surgeon's hands into what amounts to microsurgery, allowing the performance of technically demanding procedures with great precision.

Minimally invasive procedures for the diagnosis, staging and treatment of cancer available at Baptist include:

• laparoscopic biopsy of intraabdominal masses and intraabdominal and retroperitoneal lymph nodes
• laparoscopic evaluation for staging of intraabdominal masses and intraabdominal and retroperitoneal lymph nodes
• laparoscopic-assisted resection of the colon
• laparoscopic splenectomy (removal of the spleen)
• laparoscopic excision of abdominal tumors
• laparoscopic lymph node removal
• laparoscopic nephrectomy
• laparoscopic-assisted vaginal hysterectomy
• laparoscopic oophorectomy or salpingo-oophorectomy
• endoscopic laryngeal surgery
• robotic radical prostatectomy
• video-assisted thorascopy for biopsies of the lung and pleura; exploration of chest; bleb resection; lung resection; removal of nodules in the lung; and evaluation of lymph nodes in the mediastinum and chest
• sentinel lymph node biopsies (for breast cancer and melanoma)
• laparoscopic cholecystojejunostomy
• laparoscopic colostomy

Learn more about Cancer Services at Baptist.