Mary Washington Hospital hosts Robotic Surgery Expo

The event will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the atrium of Mary Washington Hospital at 1001 Sam Perry Blvd. in Fredericksburg. Visitors can view live demonstrations of state-of-the-art robots, speak with surgeons, clinical specialists and robotic surgery professionals and discover the range of robots used.

The event will be hosted by Moxi, a robotic hospital assistant that joined the Mary Washington Hospital staff in December 2021. Moxi is a point-to-point delivery robot, meaning it can retrieve items in one department and deliver them to another. Having the robot around means nurses, certified nursing assistants and techs can remain on the unit and spend more time with patients.

Earlier in October, MWHC became the first health-care system in central Virginia — and among the first in the world, according to the MWHC website — to utilize the da Vinci 5 robot. It’s the fifth-generation robotic system and has been decades in the making as it includes more than 150 enhancements since the last model.

Dr. Avinash Narayana, division chair of robotics, completed the first surgery at Mary Washington Hospital with the da Vinci 5 robot and hailed its new features. He said the system would “allow us to perform complex procedures with greater precision and efficiency. (It’s) a game changer.”

While the term “robotic surgery” sounds like robots are actually doing the operation, the system allows surgeons to control small tools that remove or repair tissues and organs laparoscopically and not through open surgery.

Robotic surgery often results in less discomfort, less bleeding, less time in the hospital and faster recovery periods for patients, according to the American College of Surgeons. A May 2023 story on robotic surgery — once considered a futuristic idea — said the industry had grown significantly in the last 25 years.

Intuitive Surgical, which manufactures the da Vinci systems, reported that more than 12 million robotic surgery procedures have been performed and more than 60,000 surgeons around the world have been trained on its systems.

Mary Washington Hospital introduced its robotics program in 2008 and has upgraded technology since then, including adding surgical robots for lung cancer detection and knee and hip replacements. Stafford Hospital introduced its robotic surgery program in late 2023.