None — Transplant surgeons at Allegheny General Hospital announced this morning they have performed the first live-donor kidney transplant in western Pennsylvania in which a robot assisted a surgeon.
Surgeons said an unidentified man from the region is recovering well after the procedure June 30.
The AGH surgeons, who used the hospital's da Vinci Robotic Surgical System, are among a select few in the United States doing the procedure. Instead of large incisions, the system allows surgeons to extract a donor kidney through a three-inch incision in the lower abdomen.
AGH's live-donor transplant is the only such program in operation in western Pennsylvania. Rival UPMC temporarily shut down its program May 9 after a donor transmitted the hepatitis C virus to a kidney recipient. UPMC officials expect the program to reopen but have not said when that will happen.
Dr. Kusum Tom performed the surgery, assisted by Dr. Akhtar Khan. The kidney was flown to Columbia University Medical Center in New York, where surgeons successfully implanted it into a 65-year-old man with end-stage kidney disease, according to AGH officials.
The donor did not know the recipient. He told his doctors he wanted to donate a kidney to a complete stranger because he had a desire to improve someone's life.
NASA developed the da Vinci surgical system for operating on astronauts in space. The U.S. Department of Defense has used it to operate on soldiers in the battlefield.
This article was written by Channel 11 News exchange partners at TribLIVE.
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