This Robot Creates a GPS for Your Lungs

- [Doug] I was hoping you wouldn't ask that question I've been smoking probably 55 years. I quit in January when they found the nodule in my lung. (upbeat music) - [Dr. Pritchett] Lung cancer is the largest cancer killer in the United States it kills more people than colon, breast and pancreatic cancer combined. - [Dr. Herrera] It is a challenge to diagnose these patients early despite all the technologies to date. - [Dr. Pritchett] 75% of patients are found when they're at stage three or four where we can't do a surgery to cure them. We need something that changes the status quo something that we can get out to smaller lesions with confidence and safely biopsy them. That's where robotics comes into play. (upbeat music continues) - [Patient] I thought you would be good today. - [Dr. Pritchett] I am I'm gonna give you the good stuff and we're gonna knock you out cold. - [Patient] You ain't giving me no barbecue. (both laughing) - [Dr. Pritchett] We have a lot of lung cancer here in North Carolina in general. I kind of call it the tobacco belt. We find out people have lung cancer in a variety of ways in terms of detecting it but ultimately all of these patients to establish a diagnosis of lung cancer need to have a biopsy. That means we go in by whatever method and we actually just take a piece of tissue, get some cells, give them to the pathologist and see if those are cancer or not. The most invasive option to get a biopsy of the lung is a surgical biopsy. - [Dr. Herrera] Sometimes a biopsy is accurate the first time, sometimes another method needs to be used. Eventually if surgery is needed, the surgeons get involved, the surgery is performed. - [Dr. Pritchett] We try to avoid that if we can help it because it's a very invasive option and not a lot of these patients can tolerate that. - [Doug] I got a new doctor, he knew that I smoked cigarettes. "Why don't you quit?" "Why don't you quit?" He talked me into having a CT scan and it showed a little, I guess you'd call it a nodule, in my lungs. At that particular point it was presumed that I had cancer. (soft rock music) They tried to do a biopsy but could not get a decisive sample. That led to the fact that we were going to open me up and get a sample surgically, which I didn't want to do. - [Dr. Pritchett] Doug's case was incredibly difficult. They said that they were going to have to do an open thoracotomy where they basically cut you between the ribs from front to back. A lot of patients have permanent nerve damage and pain months or even years after that. - [Dr. Herrera] When the nodule is a little bit deeper or you cannot feel it, it poses a challenge because now it's hard to get a diagnosis from the surgical field or we have to remove a large part of the lung to get that diagnosis. - [Dr. Pritchett] So this is the crazy location that it was in, right there. This is the aorta, this is the pulmonary artery and it's so deep in the lungs you can't really get a needle biopsy. It was a little bit intimidating to see the lesion in such a position. So I said, "I'm gonna try the robot." Ion is a minimally invasive robotic platform that allows me to take this steerable catheter and go far out into the periphery of the lung where most of these lung cancers are. I can angle it up to 180 degrees and see where I'm going at all times with the camera. It's almost like a roadmap and I can just steer and take a left turn and a right turn and then I also have GPS built in. So it's like driving to somebody's house with Google Maps and you just follow the directions right to the lesion. In Doug's case I was able to make something that was incredibly difficult looking, very easy. It took just a few minutes with the Ion robot to get in that position and it held itself in that position for all the biopsies that I needed. If Doug would have had that surgery his recovery would have been long and slow and may have actually been incomplete. He likely would have been in the hospital for four or five days. It would have been weeks before he was able to even lift anything as heavy as a carton of milk. With our procedure he went home the same day. What we're trying to do is create this stage shift where we catch patients at a much earlier stage. Look what we've done with prostate cancer, for example. We've made leaps and bounds in terms of survivability of that disease. We have to have a reliable way that we can confidently biopsy these things and not only rule in cancer but in some areas, rule out cancer. - [Dr. Herrera] Since 2007 I've performed over 1300 robotic assisted surgeries and over 600 of these have been for lung cancer. When we saw Ion we saw an opportunity to get to those nodules that are deeper or hard to reach or hard to find in surgery. So we can get a diagnosis to decrease the chance that we're doing a major surgery for a non-malignant case. (soft rock music) - [Doug] So far I had 38 radiation treatments and eight chemo treatments. Now I'm on immunotherapy. If I had come in off the street and they did not know that I'd had lung cancer the technician that read my latest CT scan would have given me a clear bill of health. And of course I was tickled over that, the wife and I both were. It's just been a blessing. - [Dr. Pritchett] We can talk about tools and technology and robots, but at the end of the day what we have to keep our eye on is that this is about people. I think a shift is coming for lung cancer, it's long overdue. The Ion system represents a first step. This is the beginning but it's an exciting beginning. (upbeat music) Hey, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, consider sharing it, and be sure to check out our website Freethink.com for more stories of people moving the world.

Channel: Freethink

Views: 444,139

Keywords: lung cancer, bronchoscopy, early signs of lung cancer, lung biopsy, bronchoscopy procedure, lung cancer diagnosis, lung cancer statistics, how is lung cancer diagnosed, lung biopsy procedure, bronchoscopy biopsy, lung cancer biopsy, detecting lung cancer, ion, intuitive, Michael Pritchett, pulmonologist, Biopsies, biopsy, cancer, lung, lung nodule, pulmonology, broncoscopy, pulmonary

Id: CjxURTrbR-Y

Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021