Gene Parker elected to have a robotic-assisted procedure because it offered more precision, less pain, shorter hospitalization, and quicker recovery.

General surgeon Steven Stanten, M.D.

Gene Parker is grateful to be on the other side of what he calls “the worst year of my life” and applauds Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s advanced robotic technology, skilled medical staff, and quality care for getting him there.

“I had excellent care at Alta Bates Summit, and I’m very happy that they had the robot — the equipment needed for my surgery,” says Parker, a retired financial professional who lives in the East Bay. “It’s a valuable tool for a surgeon, and it can improve the probability of successful outcomes for patients. I’m sold on robotic technology.”

At Alta Bates Summit, robotic-assisted procedures are performed with the $1.8 million da Vinci Surgical System, which was purchased in 2007 in large part through the Alta Bates Summit Foundation’s generous donations. The surgeon sits at a console and directs robotic hands that hold surgical instruments. On the monitor, the surgeon views enlarged 3-D images of the surgical area, transmitted by a tiny camera attached to a third robotic arm. Advantages of robotic-assisted techniques include more precision, less pain and blood loss, shorter hospitalization, and quicker recovery.

Getting to the point of having a positive “robotics experience” was quite a travail for Parker. It started back in the spring of 2007, when he was being awakened at night by his own coughing. As the coughing bouts grew more intense, he feared going to bed, anxious over the return of the “horrible, horrible” feeling he had that fluid was draining into his lungs.

Parker’s doctor, and the gastroenterologist to whom he was referred, thought he had acid reflux. But after he tried a series of unsuccessful remedies — altered diet, medications, and more — and a slew of diagnostic tests, the problem was pinpointed: a somewhat rare neuromuscular disorder called achalasia, which prevents food from completely emptying from the esophagus into the stomach.

Parker’s next referral was the last one — to general surgeon Steven Stanten, M.D., who is Director of Robotic Surgery and Chief of Surgery at the Summit Campus, and, as it turns out, had helped convince the Foundation to fund the purchase of the da Vinci system in the first place.

Like Parker, Dr. Stanten is sold on robotics technology, from a big-picture perspective and on its specific use in Parker’s procedure, which required delicate surgical maneuvers, including cutting the sphincter muscle in the esophagus enough so it opens but not too much so it’s left with a hole. “It has to be very, very precise,” says Dr. Stanten. “Using the robot makes it safer. It lets us complete the precise steps of the operation more exactly.” The result? Parker’s symptoms have improved dramatically. He now can eat and drink anything he wants, and sleeps restfully through the night.

Dr. Stanten strongly believes, as he did in his initial talk with the Foundation, that Alta Bates Summit needed to buy the robotics system so it “could continue to be a leader in technology.” And he’s convinced that Foundation donations “will continue to show their worth even as the robot’s uses expand. We’re doing things with the robot that we could not have done before. There’s no telling what we’ll be able to do in the future.”