El Camino Hospital has expanded its robotic surgery program to meet market demand, adding three surgical systems at the Mountain View, Calif. hospital and one at its Los Gatos site.

Hospital surgeons will perform prostate cancer, gynecologic and bariatric surgeries with the systems.

Physicians have performed more than 500 robotic surgeries over the past year and expect the number to increase in 2010 as more physicians undergo training with the enhanced equipment that allows for more minimally invasive procedures. The new da Vinci Si HD Surgical Systems feature enhanced three-dimensional, high-definition vision with better visual clarity of target tissue and anatomy.

"By extending this important technology to El Camino Hospital Los Gatos, it demonstrates the ongoing commitment to bringing world-class healthcare to the Los Gatos community," said Eric Pifer, MD, president of El Camino Hospital Los Gatos and chief medical officer at El Camino Hospital.

Twenty-five surgeons are trained in robotic assisted surgery and more surgeons will receive training in the next year.

"The strong interest among our surgeons in using this equipment has come because of the system's potential to allow them to more efficiently and precisely perform minimally invasive surgeries, which in turn improves patient experiences and outcomes," said Pifer.

Hospital officials said the system's instrumentation offers strong motor control and natural dexterity, allowing the robotic arms to essentially become an extension of the surgeon's own hands - but with the benefit of full range of motion that's otherwise not possible.

"Surgeries with the assistance of these new state-of-the art systems have the potential to let patients have shorter hospital stays, fewer complications, less pain, less scarring and quicker recovery times," said Albert Pisani, MD, a board-certified gynecologic oncologist on staff at El Camino Hospital. Pisani has performed more than a quarter of the robotic surgeries at the hospital, including the "da Vinci Hysterectomy" with lymph node removal for gynecologic cancers.

"It is a proven technique, and we expect the upgraded systems will help our surgeons get closer to our goal to be in the top 5 percent of hospitals in the United States for quality across all clinical areas by 2012," said CEO Ken Graham.

El Camino Hospital began conducting procedures with the da Vinci System in the spring of 2007. Since then, the hospital's specialized robotic surgery team has used the da Vinci System to treat hundreds of cancers of the prostate and uterus, as well as perform bariatric surgeries and deal with ob-gyn/benign disease conditions.