New operating table to boost robotic surgery

A hospital has introduced a new operating table, boosting its ability to carry out robotic surgery.

Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton first started robotic surgery in 2023 thanks to a Da Vinci robot, allowing surgeons to carry out intricate operations with less invasive surgery.

Now, a new specialist operating table will save about an hour per day of the team's time.

Tom Edwards, a colorectal surgeon at the hospital, said the new equipment will allow them to "schedule in more patients for surgery on a single day" helping to bring down waiting times.

"It's so much better to have the robot paired up with the operating table, as up until now we've been using a standard operating table that wasn't calibrated for the robot.

"While this was perfectly safe, it did mean it was taking a bit too long for us to move things around, as our theatres support colleagues had to undock the robot, and then redock it once we'd moved the patient – it wasn't ideal," he said.

Mr Edwards said set up time used to take about 20 minutes for each patient and now estimates the new operating table, which was funded by donations from the Somerset Bowel Cancer Charity, Musgrove Park League of Friends, Love Musgrove and Somerset Unit for Radiotherapy Equipment (SURE), will gain them an extra hour a day.

Richard Bamford, also a colorectal surgeon at Musgrove Park Hospital, said it was "fantastic" that the hospital was at "the cutting edge of surgical technology" in Somerset.

"Now the robot can be used by our bariatric, upper GI, urology, gynae-oncology, colorectal, and soon to be ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeons too.

"We celebrated our 200th surgery performed by the robot in August 2024 and to get through that many cases across the hospital is fantastic," he added.

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