The device has been trialled on adults for three years and demonstrated faster recovery times, less postoperative pain, and less time in the hospital. A seven-year-old in the UK has become the first child in the country to get kidney surgery with a pioneering robot-assisted device. Reece had an obstruction that inhibited the flow of urine from his kidney.
"He went to the park, and he fell on some sort of pole. He said he was okay, then went to my dad’s in the evening, and played some games, he went to the toilet and there was some blood in his urine,” said Reece’s mother, Elizabeth Wilton. “(At the hospital), he had scans, nothing came of that particular accident but then when he had the scans, they found out he had a problem between the kidney and the bladder, with the tubing, it wasn't quite as it should be," Wilton added.
A procedure known as laparoscopic pyeloplasty is performed to treat this obstruction, repairing the narrowing where the ureter meets the kidney. Traditional surgery for this procedure brings with it some complications. “The two traditional approaches to surgery are open operation where you relatively big cut and do things with your hands, or traditional laparoscopic surgery involves similar little cuts on the tummy," said Ewan Brownlee, a consultant paediatric urologist at the University Hospital Southampton who performed the procedure.
“But the instruments are straight-shafted instruments with a jaw on the inside and a straight scissor handle.