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Login to My HealthRobotic Surgery
USC has been a world-renowned center for bladder cancer treatment over the past several decades. In fact, the first orthotopic bladder reconstruction which provides a viable alternative to a colostomy bag was developed here. The recent addition of a strong robotic and laparoscopic team further bolsters the already strong open surgical excellence for treatment of invasive bladder cancer.
With more than 500,000 bladder cancer survivors in the United States alone, treatment options such as surgery have proven to be extremely effective. Transurethral resection (TUR) is a surgical procedure that is used both to diagnose bladder cancer and to remove cancerous tissue from the bladder while cystectomy is the surgical removal of all or part of the bladder (and possibly surrounding pelvic organs) to treat cancer that has spread into the bladder wall.
Cystectomy has traditionally performed using an open approach, meaning the surgeon must make a large abdominal incision to access the bladder. Another approach, conventional laparoscopy, is less invasive but limits the doctor's dexterity, field of vision and control, compared to open surgery.
However the precision and dexterity offered by the advanced instrumentation of robotic surgery allows for a minimally invasive approach to treating bladder cancer. USC surgeons have pioneered the use of minimally invasive cystectomy and urinary diversion and have performed more many more of these cases than other centers throughout the world. Furthermore, USC urologists have performed extended pelvic lymph node dissection using robotic and laparoscopic techniques with comparable lymph-node yield as open surgery.
