The National Robotic Centre will be based at the Zagreb Clinical Hospital Centre.
In modern medicine, there are more and more surgical interventions performed by robots, and Croatia should soon receive, thanks to the funding from EU grants, its first surgical robotic system, which will be located at the Zagreb Clinical Hospital Centre (KBC), where surgeons from other hospitals and young doctors will also be trained, reports Večernji List on September 3, 2018.
The National Robotic Centre should become operational in the spring of next year. The robot will cost about 15 million kuna, and the necessary funds from EU grants were secured six months ago. A committee consisting of physicians and professors from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture has been appointed. It has drafted a technical proposal, a tender has been published, and the selection of a supplier is currently underway.
The system should be delivered within six months, and it is expected that the robot will arrive at the hospital by spring. A special area where the surgeries will be performed has already been prepared.
Health Minister Milan Kujundžić said that robots mostly help in surgeries related to prostate cancer, but also in the cases of all tumours in the abdomen and chest, as well as in gynaecological surgeries. He pointed out that, in addition to physicians from the KBC, the robot will be used by doctors from other clinical hospitals. Young physicians will be trained since such surgeries are the future of medicine.
Head of the KBC Urology Clinic Željko Kaštelan attended such surgeries abroad and he considers the acquisition of the robot a great step forward for Croatian surgery. “The introduction of robotics into Croatian healthcare system is indeed a major step because it is a new technology that allows surgeons to be more precise, faster and more efficient during surgeries, while patients recover better.”
Kaštelan pointed out that in the United States as much as 90 percent of prostate cancers, which is one of the most common male cancers, are removed by robotic surgeries. “The robot allows the urologist to be very precise and remove the prostate and the tumour while avoiding other important structures in the pelvis, all of which enables faster and better recovery of the patient,” said Kaštelan.
We are a part of the modern medicine, said Kaštelan, and robots are widely used in developed countries. This step will give Croatian surgeons, urologists, gynaecologists and other specialists an opportunity to work with the latest technology.
Croatia has experience in applying robotics in medicine since the first robot for neurological surgeries was developed five years ago as a joint project by Professor Bojan Jerbić from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture and Darko Chudy, head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Dubrava Clinical Hospital. “We perform one to two surgeries per week on the robot, and the project is constantly being improved. Surgeries are faster and safer, and the possibility of errors is reduced, which is to the benefit of the patient,” said Chudy.
The same team has launched a new project called “Nero”, which together with the Nuclear Technology Institute aims to make new robots more precise, faster and more effective in the field of stereotactic neurosurgery.
Translated from Večernji LIst.
