Surgical robots increasingly have been used in children to correct congenital abnormal-ities or to remove dysfunctional or cancerous tissue. A robot was not used to reconstruct the bladder, however, until early in 2008 when Dr. Gundeti and his associates at the University of Chicago performed the first procedure of this kind on a 10-year-old girl who had neurogenic bladder [a condition caused by inability of the brain to transmit signals along a damaged spinal cord that results in incontinence, recurrent infections, and ultimately kidney damage].

Since that time, the surgeons have performed robotically assisted minimally invasive bladder reconstructive surgery on six other children. The group is reporting on the results of the surgery in the first five of these children at the Clinical Congress. Dr. Gundeti and his associates hope their experience with these children will lead other institutions to begin performing the procedure. "There are plenty of surgical robots in the United States. There are at least 400 or 500 robots, and maybe 60 percent are in academic centers and 40 percent are in private settings. Most of the surgeons who use them are urologists who operate on adults. The pediatric urologist today is comfortable doing robotically assisted procedures on the kidney and urethra. Hopefully, over the years after they watch someone do it or attend workshops or have hands-on training, they will be comfortable using the robot on the bladder and in reconstruction," he said.Source: University of Chicago Medical Center Comer Children's Hospital