St. Joseph Performs Its First Robotic Bariatric Surgery with Dr. David von Rueden, Most Experienced Baltimore area da Vinci Bariatric Surgeon
(Towson, MD) The department of Surgery at St. Joseph Medical Center is proud to announce that Dr. David von Rueden performed the hospital’s first da Vinci robotic bariatric surgery on Friday, January 22, 2009. Dr. von Rueden has been performing da Vinci bariatric surgery for the Roux-Y gastric bypass for the past three years, and offers it exclusively at St. Joseph Medical Center. He is the most experienced da Vinci bariatric surgeon in the area, and has performed the surgery for approximately 50 patients
Due to the growing obesity epidemic in the U.S., approximately 100,000 bariatric surgeries are done annually. Da Vinci surgery, in which the surgeon controls a robot’s arms from a console, can offer even more benefits to support successful weight loss. “With the da Vinci, the surgeon has a 3-D field view of the abdominal cavity instead of 2-D,” says Dr. von Rueden. “The robot provides a smooth, seamless approach to the operation with enhanced visualization and ergonomics. We use suturing material instead of staples.”
The Roux-Y gastric bypass involves “creating a new stomach pouch, approximately the size of a large egg,” says Dr. von Rueden, by separating the top from the bottom of the stomach. “Next, the small intestine is divided and connected to the stomach pouch. The food stream bypasses the lower stomach and part of the adjacent intestine (the area that produces digestive enzymes), so the patient doesn’t absorb all the food and calories he or she consumes.”
Other benefits include a change in the secretion of hormones that decreases appetite. “The surgery works very quickly metabolically. People with diabetes often come off their insulin in a couple of weeks,” explains Dr. von Rueden.
In 2005, St. Joseph Medical Center became the first community hospital in Baltimore to introduce the da Vinci robot and has performed approximately 700 da Vinci surgeries since then, of which the majority are prostatectomies to remove cancer confined to the prostate.
