Just hours apart, 2 brothers undergo robotic prostate cancer surgery

“We are blessed to have each other to depend on. If you have to go through something bad like cancer, you’re glad to have a friend to go through it with,” said one of two brothers from Savannah, Georgia recovering from robotic prostate cancer surgery. The two siblings flew to The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York to have lifesaving surgery on the same day this week. Dr. David B. Samadi, M.D., Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery in the Department of Urology at Mount Sinai successfully performed the robotic prostate cancer surgeries on the siblings one after another on Monday, January 14th, 2008.

“The brothers have benefited physically and even emotionally as a result of having their prostatectomy with the da Vinci robotic technology at Mount Sinai together,” said Dr. Samadi. “Each minimally invasive surgery was an hour and twenty minutes which included only a few tiny incisions, limited blood loss (50 CC), no need for blood transfusions, less pain, and a faster recovery which included each of the patients walking the next day and were released from the hospital two days after surgery.”

Also, along with the help of Microvascular and Plastic Surgeon Dr. Jess Ting, M.D. of the Department of Surgery, the doctors were able to preserve each patient’s sexual function after robotic surgery by implanting a nerve graft extracted from each patient’s leg. “I will still be a normal person after robotic surgery, with feeling of all nerves because of the graft,” said one brother.

“Just little holes” described the two brothers of their minor incisions from surgery, who both are grateful to have had the opportunity and option to have minimally invasive robotic prostate cancer surgery at Mount Sinai and avoiding open surgery. “Cancer is always a matter of life and death, that’s why we chose Mount Sinai for robotic prostate cancer surgery.” The brothers who are now patients turned advocates have advice for other men about prostate cancer, “When you’re talking about cancer, you can’t take any chance. We know some people are scared to have a PSA test but its so minor- you need to get checked. If ours was not tested we would be dead.”