Mano Galaviz – da Vinci Surgery for Diverticulitis Success Story

Down with diverticulitis – the da Vinci® Surgical System saves the day

Minimally invasive surgery with the da Vinci
Surgical System at Methodist Richardson
was the way to go for Mano Galaviz.

One day last fall while Mano Galaviz was driving home from work, he began experiencing sharp pain in his abdominal area – so intense that he could barely sit to complete his drive home.

He'd experienced abdominal pain a few years earlier, but it was never clear what the problem was.

"After taking X-rays, my primary care physician thought it could be prostatitis, and I began a course of antibiotics," Galaviz says. "The antibiotics seemed to work, which led us to believe they were fighting an infection somewhere."

This autumn evening, however, the new pains compelled Galaviz's wife to take him to the emergency department at Methodist Richardson Medical Center's Bush/Renner campus, where a computed tomography (CT) scan revealed that he had diverticulitis – inflamed and infected pouches, or diverticula, which had formed in the wall of his colon.

Galaviz was immediately admitted to the hospital, where a team of clinicians and Ramsey Stone, MD, independently practicing general surgeon on the medical staff at Methodist Richardson, could keep a close watch on his condition. If one of the diverticula ruptured, emergency open surgery would be required.

Bring in the robot

Galaviz was sent home on antibiotics and scheduled for a partial colonoscopy two weeks later with Sripathi Kethu, MD, independently practicing gastroenterologist on the medical staff at Methodist Richardson. After the partial colonoscopy, Drs. Kethu and Stone agreed that an additional surgery was required to remove the infected section of Galaviz's colon. For this procedure, Dr. Stone chose to operate with the robotic da Vinci® Surgical System.

"The advantages of using the da Vinci robot for this surgery are the smaller incisions and that it is much more minimally invasive," Dr. Stone says. "A few of his incisions were less than an inch long."

Galaviz is grateful he was proactive and did not wait to have surgery.

"If I would have waited to go to the hospital, I could have risked a rupture so large that laparoscopic surgery with the da Vinci robot would not have been an option, likely resulting in me having to wear a colostomy bag," he says.

Now Galaviz is pain- and medication-free and thankful for his speedy recovery. "Da Vinci surgery is the way to go," he says.

From the summer 2012 edition of Shine magazine.