Help Bring the Next Generation
of Surgery to Southcoast Hospitals
Southcoast to offer the region’s only robotic-assisted surgical services
Southcoast Hospitals Group will open a robotic surgical program this fall, which will allow surgeons to perform robotic-assisted, minimally invasive procedures with greater precision and expertise.
The da Vinci Surgical System will first be used for complex urological surgeries, such as radical prostatectomies — a procedure used to treat prostate cancer — with plans to expand to gynecological procedures. It will be located at Charlton Memorial Hospital, the Fall River site of Southcoast Hospitals Group, and will be used by surgeons from throughout the Southcoast system.
“Southcoast Hospitals is the first health care organization to bring state-of- the-art robotic surgical technology to Southeastern Massachusetts,” said Keith A. Hovan, President & CEO of Southcoast Hospitals Group. “We are raising the bar for cancer surgery and offering our patients the fastestgrowing method of prostate cancer surgery available.”
Approximately 30 percent of prostate cancer patients in the U.S. are treated with surgery. Surgical robotics is a technology designed to give surgeons more precision and control during complex, minimally invasive procedures. The surgeon is 100 percent in control of the robotic system at all times.
Technology Where the Need Is Greatest
The incidence of prostate cancer in the Fall River region is 42 percent greater than in the rest of the South Coast region. More than 500 cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in 2005 in the Greater Fall River and Greater New Bedford markets.Your Help Is Needed
With a price tag of more than $1 million, your help is needed to bring this important technology to Southcoast.“Our goal is to raise $500,000 to help fund the purchase of the da Vinci system,” said Barbara H. Mulville, CFRE, Senior Vice President of External Affairs at Southcoast. “We hope that members of the community will step forward, as they so often have in the past, to help us bring this most advanced and very much-needed technology right here to our region.”
