Northwestern Medicine plans $15M upgrade to Kishwaukee Hospital’s surgery suite, with new surgery robot

DeKALB – Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital debuted a new multi-million-dollar surgical robot this week, part of a 2-year, $15 million plan to upgrade the hospital’s surgery space.

The DaVinci Xi surgical robot is the latest machine that allows surgeons to offer patients operations with less pain, fewer incisions and a shortened recovery time.

Ricardo Soares, a urologist and surgeon at Kishwaukee Hospital, became the first surgeon to do a robotic surgery at the facility in September of 2019, a month after the machine’s predecessor, the Da Vinci Si Robotic Surgery System, was debuted in DeKalb.

“Now I’m really excited to be doing the first robotic surgery on the new robot,” Soares, 41, of Naperville said. Soares planned to use the machine during its inaugural operation this week.

JoAnn Ricketts, 52, director of surgical services and interventional labs, said the new robot will save time in the operating room and be safer for patients under its knife because it will allow for smaller incisions, more precision with the instruments it uses, shorter hospital stays and less pain after a procedure.

The four-armed contraption will be used for surgeries on kidneys and hysterectomies. Soares said it’ll help with a new technique for operating on prostate cancer he learned in Europe that enables patients to regain continence faster.

“It also helps because I’m doing a technique for prostate cancer surgery that actually we’re the only hospital of the Northwestern region network that are actually doing this,” Soares said. “Like usually only about 40% of the patients recover in the first month, but with this technique 90% recover from it in the first month. And I was doing that with the old robot with great results, but with this new robot it’s going to make that approach even more seamless.”

While the hospital already had a surgical robot, Soares said it was getting a little outdated. He likened it to getting a new smart phone to stay up to date on the most cutting-edge technology.

“The iPhone, the old one still works, but there’s a lot of features it doesn’t have,” Soares said. “The software gives you always an idea where all the arms are, even if they’re not inside your field of vision, which is obviously way safer. It’s a great thing.”

Soares said the new robot allows him to push a button to flip the direction of a camera on the tip of one of the four arms. Before, Soares had to remove the camera, manually flip it and then reinsert the instrument into the patient’s body. Now, it’s like doing surgery in virtual reality with limbs that go beyond the ability of a human’s body, he said. The operating console uses separate cameras for each eye, giving the surgeon a three-dimensional view of what’s being operated on.

“As I’m looking at it, it’s almost as if I’m inside the patient and with my controls I control very small instruments,” Soares said. “They have like the wrist technique that they have. It enables a range of movement that is beyond the human wrist.”

In the near future, the DaVinci Xi surgical robot also will be used in general surgery. Soares said the machinery may make a bigger difference for general surgery than it will for him because the robot can easily work in different areas of the body.

“I think it’s incredibly exciting and really shows the investment of Northwestern in our hospital and in our community,” Ricketts said.

Sarah Snyder, director of surgical services and interventional labs, said general surgeons could not operate the previous surgical robot, the DaVinci Si Surgical System.

“So anything that needed to be done robotically for patients could not be done at this location,” Snyder. “But now with the Xi it will be, so we can offer that to our community now, too.”

In addition to the DaVinci Xi surgical robot, Ricketts said the surgery suite at Kishwaukee Hospital is being renovated, upgraded and refreshed. That renovation will begin in December.

“The current surgery suite has not had a major remolding since the opening of the hospital,” Ricketts said. “Northwestern is investing considerable dollars to renovate the 19,000 square foot of space.”

The operating room and sterile processing area will remain as is while all other areas of the surgical suite will be replaced over the next two years. The suite will have two new rooms dedicated to endoscopy procedures, state-of-the-art scope reprocessing equipment and scope drying cabinets and new furniture.

“For patient privacy, all the same-day surgery bays are private rooms with break away sliding glass entry doors,” Rickets said.

Currently, in an area where confidential and personal information is discussed, curtains are the only privacy afforded to patients and their family.

“If you can image, people being getting ready for surgery or immediately after surgery and the surgeon is coming in and talking to the family – not a lot of privacy,” Ricketts said. “And so now with those break away glass doors that will just be improved privacy, which is, you know, as a patient that’s pretty huge.”

Beyond the necessity for privacy, Snyder said – with a television on and people talking – it can be an uncomfortable place to wake up in after surgery. This renovation seeks to change that.

Marckie Hayes, senior staff program director for administration at Kishwaukee and Valley West hospitals, said the goal of the renovation for the surgery suite is to bring “clinically academic care to people’s backyards.”

Hayes said the work will help centralize the hospital’s offerings for area residents.

“And being able to, you know, allow those in the community to not have to travel on every single occasion,” Hayes said.