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Dr. Adam Ofer used to drive a Yugo. Now he drives a Porsche. That's not really how he gets around (his real ride lies somewhere between), but rather a way of describing the step up in the way he's been performing laparoscopic gynecological surgery since Norwalk Hospital got its da Vinci robotic operating system almost three years ago.
"There used to be two options for those surgeries," says Ofer,a board certified ob/gyn and urogynecologist with expertise in pelvic reconstructive surgery, including da Vinci surgery for treatment of prolapse and urinary incontinence. In addition to directing the hospital's gynecology department, Dr.Ofer is also a partner in the Avery Center for Obstetrics and Gynecology, with offices in Westport, Fairfield and Norwalk. "We could make a large abdominal incision, which meant blood loss, a big scar and a long recovery period, or reach the area vaginally, which had a higher failure rate." The introduction of laparoscopic surgery, where the surgeon operates using instruments inserted through small incisions, reduced many of those problems, permitting many procedures to be done on an out-patient basis and allowing patients to return home and to work much sooner. The da Vinci system increased those benefits exponentially.
"Before, we used instruments that only operated in a straight line, and observed through a small camera via an optic tube," Ofer says. "It was a great improvement over traditional surgery, but it still had huge limitations.
"The da Vinci's 'arms' are fully articulated, and there are two cameras, allowing us to see in high definition and three dimensions, at 10 times the magnification we could before. We can operate so much more precisely, and treat tissue so much more delicately." He cites the case of a woman who had a procedure in the morning, was reading a bedtime story to her child that night and asking to go back to work the next day.
Like its namesake, the da Vinci system has elevated the process of minimally invasive surgery to the level of high art, with Ofer wielding his robotic scalpel with the skill of a Renaissance painter.
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