Pancreatic Surgeon William Burns explains the latest advancements in Pancreatic Surgery at performed at Johns Hopkins.
Yeah. In addition to doing traditional pancreas surgery, we've become very experienced and accomplished at doing minimally invasive surgery using a robot to perform both the whipple procedure, distal pancreatic to me and even in some unique circumstances, Total pancreatic to me, we're finding that the outcomes with this operation are just as safe as those with traditional surgery and may have some benefits for patients in terms of their recovery and the return to normal life. Yeah, we see a lot of patients that have tumors that involve the blood vessels around the pancreas. These are often patients with borderline, respectable cancers where the superior esoteric vein or the portal vein is affected by the tumor. We've had years and years of experience dealing with these types of problems and have a team that can either replace part of that vein, remove the entire vessel and reconstruct it. Um Or in sometimes in some cases where we can remove the vessel without reconstructing it. Um Based on some of the unique ability to predict the blood vessel involvement. Based on our imaging techniques and our surgeons experience, we can really customize the procedure for those patients, patients that have a tumor that context the artery to the liver. Um Those patients have traditionally not been off surgery offered surgery if the hepatic artery is involved and so we can remove the tumor and the lymphatic channels along the hepatic artery. What we consider a period dentition dissection or an arterial divestment of the tumor. Occasionally though the artery has to be removed and we do have the ability to allow circum flex blood flow to the liver without reconstructing the artery. Or occasionally partnering with our vascular or transplant surgeons to reconstruct the paddock artery. The most challenging problem for a lot of patients with pancreas cancer is involvement of the superior Mesen Terek artery. Again, we use the techniques of dissecting along the outside of the artery wall to remove all the nerves and lymphatic tissue along the superior mesen Terek artery while preserving the normal blood flow to the intestine. This unique procedure allows us to have a high rate of complete resection of tumors without requiring reconstruction of the artery or compromise of blood flow to the intestine. Mhm. Traditionally patients who have pancreas cancer when it spreads to other parts of the body have not benefited from surgery. As we've seen some advances in chemotherapy for pancreas cancer, we started to realize that a select group of patients may be eligible. We've been studying patients who have tumors that spreads to the liver but no other organs. And we've been able to do surgery in a growing number of those patients over the last number of years, we've seen some very promising outcomes and are starting to offer that unique procedure of removing the pancreas tumor as well as the metastases to the liver for some of these patients. Yeah
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