Severance Hospital said Tuesday that it has recently accomplished 10,000 robotic surgeries in urology, marking the first such case in Korea and Asia and the second in the world.

The Department of Urology at Severance Hospital took its first step by successfully operating robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy for the first time in Asia in July 2005.

Most of the robot-assisted surgeries were on prostate cancer when the method was first introduced. However, the surgical method expanded its field to kidney, ureteral, and bladder cancer, as well as ureteral and bladder reconstruction and pediatric urinary surgery, according to the hospital.

Severance Hospital has the world's highest record of 4,000 robotic prostatectomies with an extraperitoneal approach to minimizing organ damage. The hospital's Retzius-sparing technique approaches from the back of the prostate, unlike the existing method, and preserves the anterior prostate structure to reduce complications. It is recognized for its unrivaled expertise.

In renal cancer cases, which accompany a high risk of massive bleeding during the operation, Severance performed a single-incision robotic surgery for the first time in Korea based on its experience with microinvasive methods before introducing robotic surgery.

The hospital has recently been using the da Vinci single port system (SP) to perform partial nephrectomy more safely and conveniently with minimal incisions.

Bladder cancer surgery demands an advanced technical skill as it requires a long time for surgeons to carry out urinary diversion after extracting the bladder, which also comes with many postoperative complications. In this field, the entire operation is performed with a robot to help early recovery. Robotic surgery has also been applied to treating urinary tract stones, ureteral stenosis, and seminal vesicles and adrenal diseases.

Severance introduced da Vinci SP in 2018, the first single-port robotic system in Korea, to perform complicated reconstructive surgeries, including urethroplasty, ureteroneocystostomy, and implantation of neobladder made of the small intestine. The surgery only left a two-centimeter scar on the patient's belly button. 

The da Vinci SP system is also useful for pediatric urinary surgeries. It has been difficult to apply robot-assisted surgery in children due to their small size. However, the introduction of da Vinci SP has facilitated nephrectomy and correction of the urinary tract's congenital anomalies in many children, the hospital said.

"We will not remain complacent with being a medical institution to perform the most robotic surgeries in Asia and second in the world in 2020, and do our best to become a hospital and an educational institution favored by the largest number of people to receive treatment and learning," Professor Choi Young-deuk, head of the Department of Urology at Severance Hospital, said.

Severance Hospital will try its best to become the hub of robotic surgery in the world, Choi added.