Dr. Rooma Sinha, Senior Consultant Gynaecologist, Apollo Hospitals has achieved the rare milestone of completing 100 Robotic Myomectomies, the largest in South Asia.

Apollo Hospitals announced the reaching of a rare milestone by performing over 100 Robot Assisted Myomectomies. Dr. Rooma Sinha, Senior Consultant Gynecologist, Minimal Access & Robotic Surgeon, Apollo Health City and a pioneer in Robot assisted surgery in this part of the world, accomplished this superlative distinction of performing the largest series of Robot Assisted Myomectomies, in South Asia.

Fibroids in the uterus are the most common noncancerous tumors in young women of reproductive age. It causes heavy bleeding leading to anaemia, pelvic pain, pressure and pain in periods. They can be responsible for infertility and affect the quality of life for today’s active and dynamic women. Current management strategies are mainly surgical as medical options are limited. Removal of symptomatic fibroids with uterine preservation in women who wish to conceive or otherwise retain their uterus is referred to as myomectomy.

Open surgery is commonly performed for women with large or multiple fibroids. Minimally invasive surgery carries several well-documented advantages with small scars and rapid recovery. However, removing large fibroids by traditional laparoscopy has been challenging. Even in the USA, 85% of such patients undergo open surgery. Minimally invasive surgery in this setting is a highly specialized skill that Dr. Rooma Sinha has developed in a career spanning over two decades. Starting in 1996, Dr. Rooma Sinha perfected laparoscopic techniques that enabled removal of such fibroids by laparoscopy in close to 70% of patients. However, that still left a section of women with difficult fibroids that just could not be managed by this technique.

It is in this setting that the advent of Robot assisted surgery has come as a major technological advance that can complement the skills of a surgeon. Approved for Gynaecological surgery in 2005 in the USA, the technology was acquired by Apollo Health City in 2012. With magnified 3D vision, incredible human wrist like manoeuvrability, the robot quickly enables the surgeon to extend this minimally invasive technology to even the most technically challenging cases. In fact, subsequent experience has now shown that precision suturing of the uterus allows these women to safely become pregnant and deliver a child.