Doctors in the UK have saved a woman’s sight by performing the world’s first robotic assisted orbital surgery to remove a tumour from a patient’s anterior orbit.
Teams at Moorfields Eye Hospital (MEH) and Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) have collaborated for many years and have developed a highly specialised Orbital Oncology Group where they treat advanced orbital malignancies with very good survival results – more than 65 per cent of patients have a five-year survival for stage four cancers.
Recently, they successfully performed the world’s first robotic assisted orbital surgery to remove a tumour from a patient’s anterior orbit on a woman who had previously had surgery elsewhere which had failed to remove the tumour adequately.
Mr Jean-Pierre Jeannon, Consultant ENT Head & Neck Surgeon at GSTT carried out the procedure.
He said: “Whilst the majority of our work is orbital exenteration this represents the last resort for advanced orbital malignancy.
“We are therefore looking at alternatives to aggressive ablative surgery such as neo-adjuvant immunotherapy to reduce tumours prior to surgery hence reducing morbidity of resection.
“In addition, at GSTT we’ve been developing advanced robotic surgery. We’ve become one of the largest robotic surgery providers with six robots in clinical use plus two in research.
“Robotic surgery has the ability to offer highly refined and precision surgery as it scales the hand movements down to a 5:1 ratio and eliminates tremor.
“I’ve developed a translational clinical project from model, dry lab, wet lab and now first in man creating Robotic Assisted Orbital Surgery (RAOS).”
A case report has now been published of the first in man case and Mr Jeannon has now operated on four patients as part as a pilot study where they have avoided orbital exenteration.
The team is working with two robotic companies Intuitive from the USA and CMR in the UK.
Mr Jeannon added: “We’re now trying to evaluate the potential applications of RAOS through a PhD project using the IDEAL framework.
“Our hope is that existing systems can be altered to facilitate expansion of use in Ophthalmology.
“We want to democratise the use of robotics throughout different surgical specialities.
“Robotics is not universally adopted throughout surgery and has really only developed in fields where Laparoscopic surgery is in situ.”
The team is looking for funding for a PhD student to investigate the full potential of this novel technique.
Anyone who can support the team in this endeavour should email meh-tr.lid.oncology@nhs.net
(Pictured are JP Leannon, Head and Neck Surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’, Claire Daniel, Ocuploplastic Surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital and Jimmy Uddin, Oculoplastic Surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital)
