Students from Greater Latrobe and Ligonier Valley school districts joined other local residents Friday in trying out the controls of an improved surgical robot introduced during an open house at Excela Latrobe Hospital.

Seventeen Excela surgeons use the robot and one like it at Excela Westmoreland Hospital to perform precision procedures ranging from hernia repairs to cancer surgeries.

Michael Marinchak, 18, of Ligonier Borough was one of nine Ligonier Valley anatomy students who used the sophisticated machine to place tiny hoops on colored cones in a training simulation meant to enhance STEM education at local schools. He said getting to control the da Vinci Xi robot and attending the high school class have reinforced his desire to be a pediatric nurse.

“This class made me positive this is what I want to do, and this machine just took it over the top,” he said. “It was cool. It’s honestly like playing a video game, but playing a video game to save someone’s life in surgery.”

Cecilia Daniele, 17, of Unity Township, who is enrolled in an Advanced Placement biology course at Greater Latrobe, was impressed by the responsiveness of the da Vinci controls as she maneuvered the rings into place. “It feels like you’re hand is right there and you’re just pinching it and putting it on,”she said.

Interested in a career in mechanical engineering, she said of the robotic system, “I want to make this stuff, not necessarily use it.”

With the da Vinci system, a surgeon sits at a console that allows him to view a three-dimensional image of the surgical field while manipulating hand controls that work like forceps. The system translates hand, wrist and finger movements to miniaturized surgical instruments inside the patient that are attached to one of three robotic arms. A fourth arm is equipped with a camera that serves as an extension of the surgeon’s eyes.

Dr. Michael Szwerc, thoracic surgeon and medical director of Excela’s robotic program, explained the fourth-generation da Vinci system is an improvement on a previous version that had been in use at the Latrobe hospital since 2009.

The Xi system has a more compact camera that allows a surgeon to fit more instruments through a dime-sized incision, to handle more sophisticated procedures, Szwerc said.

“It also has more safety features, so the surgeon is getting more feedback in terms of what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and how they’re doing it efficiently,” Szwerc said.

He said the system can be used to test the blood flow in body tissues to ensure they’re healthy and offers surgeons greater versatility in joining tissue.

Noting he’s completed more than 1,000 such procedures, he said, “I really believe I can sew better with a robot than I can through open surgery — because of the visualization, because of the technology built into the device.”

Such surgeries result in less blood loss, smaller scars, shorter hospitalizations, quicker recovery and less post-operative discomfort.

Excela surgical teams have completed more than 5,000 robot-assisted surgeries — including at Excela Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg, where a da Vinci system was added in 2014. Gynecologic and thoracic surgeries are the most common procedures to employ a robot.

The new robot at Latrobe, provided by Intuitive, represents a $1.8 million investment, with the Latrobe Area Hospital Charitable Foundation contributing $500,000.

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