"From hysterectomy to urinary incontinence procedures, minimally invasive surgery is available for most female health problems."
-Robert A. Wood M.D., FACOG Mobile ObGyn, P.C.
History's first surgeons didn't have the luxury of worrying about how invasive their surgeries were. Patients were operated on as a last resort, often with outcomes that were worse than the disorders that were being treated. Safe and adequate anesthesia, infection prevention, and incision closure were the concerns of the day.
Advances in medical care have allowed the modern day surgeon to change his focus. Sure, infection is still a concern and surgery will always be associated with risks of complications, but we have conquered some of the major pitfalls of early surgical procedures to the extent that we can concentrate on making our approach to surgery as minimal as possible.
Minimally invasive surgery is surgery that is done through the smallest incisions possible with the least disruption of uninvolved, adjacent tissues and organs; fix the problem and do it with the least trauma possible. It usually involves operating through two or three 1/4 inch incisions, using a camera to project a view of the surgery onto a television monitor (laparoscopy). Other procedures are done through similarly small incision and are accomplished by "feel" and a thorough knowledge of the surrounding structures. The incisions are so small that "glue" can be used to close them instead of "stitches." These approaches have replaced procedures that were done through large "cesarean section-type" incisions up until just a few years ago.
Why adopt a minimally invasive approach to surgery? Some experts have suggested that minimally invasive hysterectomies such as the Laparoscopic Supracervical Hysterectomy decrease future risk of urinary incontinence or altered sexual function. Others say that these approaches are safer because less tissue dissection is required. Certainly, these surgeries allow patients to have the shortest possible recovery with the quickest return to normal activities. "Slings" for leaky bladders (incontinence) often allow patients to return home the day of their surgery, problem cured.
Anytime a patient undergoes surgery there will be scars, pain, and disruption of her life, but new surgical approaches can minimize these problems. Scars are essentially invisible, not even requiring "stitches." Pain is as minimal as it can be due to smaller incisions and limiting surgery to only the problem areas. Patients often return to their normal activities in just a few days or weeks. We will continue to refine our techniques, but surgery today is entirely different from that performed by our forefathers, and even that performed just a few years ago. The improvements have been immense and the patients are the beneficiaries.
