The Royal Surrey County is amongst the first in the world to have successfully conducted a series of hernia repairs by performing a unique single-port procedure entirely via the umbilicus (belly button). Mr Yuen Soon, Consultant Oesophageal-Gastric and Laparoscopic Surgeon at the Royal Surrey County Hospital is part of a worldwide surgical community pioneering this and applying single port surgery to different conditions.
The Single-Incision Laparoscopic Surgery (SILs) also known as Single-Port Access (SPA) technique, has caught the imagination of surgeons throughout the world by its reduction of trauma and scarring to patients by reducing the number of incisions. It is anticipated that this new technique will bring significant improvement to patients’ experience of surgery. Typically a keyhole operation requires number of ‘keyholes’ for the camera and instruments. In this technique Mr Soon has used a special keyhole which allows him to introduce all his instruments through a single 2.5cm incision at the belly button.
This Single Incision operation is only being used at three to four other hospitals in the UK. These other units mainly perform gallbladder and appendectomies. Mr Yuen Soon at the Royal Surrey has been pioneering this technique for hernia repairs. The unit has been auditing their results from this surgery and have now performed this type of procedure on 30 patients with very good results. "So far the majority of our patients use little or no pain killing medication. In fact one patient was climbing a tree four days after his hernia operation” Mr Soon further comments “from our early experience our patients seem to be more active earlier and require fewer pain killers. This technique is now robust and producing consistently good results” . He adds “we still need to study the results very closely to ensure we are always improving our technique”. At the Royal Surrey Mr Soon is now offering this type of surgery as the standard for all his keyhole hernia repairs and appendectomies. Patients for gallbladder operations are still being specially selected for this operation as is the case for all the other units.
This Single Incision technique is the next big innovation for keyhole surgery. The technique is new but already producing consistently excellent results. Mr Soon's results are being presented later this month in Glasgow at the Association of Surgeons meeting and in Prague next month at the European Association of Endoscopic Surgeons Conference.
Mr Soon. who is also a keyhole tutor at the internationally renowned Minimal Access Therapy Training Unit (MATTU) in Guildford, is one of two General Surgeons selected to teach his technique at the UKs first Single Incision/SPA course on the 4th of June 2009 in Guildford. He is also organising the first ever course in South East Asia in his capacity as Visiting Professor to the National University of Malaysia.
For Mr Soon to be the first to perform this type of surgery is a testament to the tremendous advances in clinical surgery that are being made at the Royal Surrey County Hospital with its close links to the Minimal Access Therapy Training Unit (MATTU), which was founded by Professor Michael Bailey.