Innovative medical device makes its way to Treasure Valley health system

Better outcomes, less scarring, quicker healing times are all goals with any surgery. Thanks to a technological upgrade, one area health system will be able to make, meet and surpass those goals.

A well-known surgery robot, the da Vinci 5 surgical system, is being employed by Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Nampa. According to the organization, it’s the second one in the state and the first in the Treasure Valley.

The robot allows the operating surgeons to feel more and see more during procedures, leading to more efficiency, insights and those sought after better outcomes.

“We have the capability of using this to perform procedures across specialties including cardiac, thoracic, foregut, bariatrics, general, urology, gynecology and even oncology,” said Dr. Christopher Reising, surgical service line medical director. “All have simple and complex cases that the da Vinci 5 robot makes better, safer and faster.”

The first procedure to use the da Vinci 5 was done on Dec. 18 in Nampa, and the health system will be installing its second robot at its Boise location before the end of the year.

“With the da Vinci 5, we will have additional sensory features that we didn’t have before that will provide us feedback when we’re touching tissue,” Reising said. “There’s also a huge data capability we’ll be able to pull in with future applications including supercomputing, AI and virtual, augmented reality.”

Though the surgical robot is new to the Treasure Valley medical community, it’s been around for quite some time, having a decade of research and development and more than 14 million procedures having been performed by various iterations of the da Vinci robot surgical system.

The da Vinci 5 is not Saint Alphonsus first foray into robotic surgery, however. The health system has been using the da Vinci Xi model for more than a decade.

“By increasing efficiencies and gathering greater insights, advanced surgical technology, like the da Vinci 5, offers us a chance to enable better outcomes, reduce how long patients have to stay in the hospital, and lower the total cost of care for our patients and community,” said David McFadyen, president and CEO of Saint Alphonsus Health System.