Memorial Health System Urologic Surgeon Celebrates Surgical Milestone
Memorial Health System (MHS) is proud to announce that as of July 2nd, urologist Carson Wong, MD, FRCSC, FACS successfully completed his 1,000th robot-assisted laparoscopic surgical procedure using the da Vinci robotic surgical system.
First introduced to the health system 10 years ago, the da Vinci has been implemented across nearly all service lines, revolutionizing how surgeons perform surgery by allowing for minimally invasive procedures, better outcomes, and quicker recovery times for patients. Since then, MHS has celebrated over 5,000 collective surgeries utilizing this system and many patients have benefitted greatly from its use.
Until February 2018, robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy had not been offered or available in this area and patients had to travel hours away for this standard of care. With the addition of Dr. Wong to the MHS team, the region’s first four robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy procedures were performed on patients from Cleveland, Ohio at Marietta Memorial Hospital—paving the way to providing patients with top-tier urology care locally. Since then, Dr. Wong and his team have continued to treat their patients with exceptional, patient-centered care.
“Yes, it is a milestone,” he explains, “but it’s not about how many [procedures] one has performed. You have to approach and treat each individual patient like they are the one—the only one that counts, regardless of the number of procedures that you have previously completed. When you stop thinking of it that way, outcomes become compromised.”
In response to reaching 1,000 procedures, Dr. Wong is quick to credit not only those directly involved in the operating room (OR), but also the team members who perform roles outside the OR—from those working directly to schedule patients at the beginning of their healthcare journey, to the ones providing post-operative care prior to hospital discharge. “As an individual,” Dr. Wong shares, “you cannot do it alone.”
Visit mhsystem.org/Urology to learn more about Memorial Health System’s Department of Urology’s exceptional providers and extensive service offerings.
