From an interview with
Dr. Matthew Jones, general surgeon
Pee Dee Surgical Group

Has your surgeon offered you a choice between robotic surgery and laparoscopic surgery? If so, you may wonder what the difference is between the two. No matter what type of surgery you choose, you can rest assured that you are in the hands of the most experienced and skilled doctors at McLeod Health. Here’s more on robotic and laparoscopic surgeries – two procedures that have revolutionized healthcare and dramatically improved surgical patient outcomes.

So minimally invasive is usually used to describe the incision that you’re gonna see. So what we mean by that is, with an old school incision, generally what I would tell patients is, if you can imagine the size of two hands side by side, that’s the size the incision needs to be. 

But with minimally invasive surgery, I can make much smaller incisions and use instruments that allow me to get my hands into your belly or wherever I’m working without the need for much mobilization of any organs or any movement with my hands. Generally, if we can, we prefer to do a minimally invasive approach because, if you think about it, a large incision versus a much smaller incision, the pain is going be significantly less. For most people, they go home sooner. They get back to work sooner. 

So for the patient, laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery will effectively be the same. Whatever’s best, whatever’s most efficient for them is what I would choose. I’m going to always, if I can, err on the side of a minimally invasive approach if it’s something that I do very routinely.

Another benefit to robotic surgery is the stereoscopic viewing, which means when I put my face into that (robotic) console, it’s like my face and my hands are in your abdomen or wherever I’m operating. And so I have a complete view of everything around me, as well as the benefit to the robot. What is a little bit different than laparoscopic is I can dock the robot and operate in multiple places at the same time.  And so if there are multiple things that need doing, I can do it much more efficiently robotically. 

To learn more, speak with a surgeon near you.