A doctor at Binh Dan Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City has transferred a robotic surgery method for gastrointestinal cancer treatment to his colleagues at Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center (CGHMC) in the Philippines.

Dr. Nguyen Phu Huu, deputy head of the department of gastroenterology at Binh Dan, performed the instruction in the Philippines at the invitation of CGHMC with the approval from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health.

Huu guided doctors of CGHMC to successfully perform robotic surgery for rectal cancer on a 50-year-old female patient who had received preoperative chemotherapy and percutaneous transverse colectomy due to intestinal obstruction.

With the support of a surgical robot and Huu’s experience in more than 260 operations in Vietnam, the robot-assisted surgery successfully ended after 2.5 hours, 3.5 hours shorter than the CGHMC doctors’ previous pace.

The Filipino doctors were impressed with the single docking technique, in which the robot position remains unchanged from the patient during the operation, and the minimally invasive dissection technique performed by the Vietnamese doctor.

It is expected that Dr. Huu will guide the CGHMC doctors to perform three more robotic surgeries, including two cases of rectal cancer and one of abdominal wall hernia.

This is the second time Binh Dan Hospital has accepted an invitation to transfer the robotic surgery method to a hospital in the Philippines after the first at Philippine General Hospital, which is run by the University of the Philippines in Manila, in October 2019.

Binh Dan Hospital pioneered the use of robotic surgery for adults in Vietnam.

Its surgeons have used the method to treat nearly 2,000 patients, mainly with urinary tract cancer and gastrointestinal cancer, after six years.

In November 2022, Dr. Do Lenh Hung, head of the urethral department of Binh Dan Hospital, transferred the technique of urethral reconstruction surgery to doctors at Thammasat University Hospital in Thailand.

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