Submitted By Northwest Medical Center
When Fred Pettit heard the word “cancer,” he didn’t think about making history. He just wanted to get rid of it and get back to his life as soon as possible. In the end, he did that and made it into the history books, too.
On Aug. 22, Pettit became the first patient in Northwest Arkansas to undergo a robot-assisted partial nephrectomy (removal of part of the kidney). Robert Zimmerman, a Rogers urologist who serves on Northwest Health System’s active medical staff, performed the milestone procedure at Northwest Medical Center — Springdale. Only three doctors in Arkansas (Zimmerman included) have performed the procedure, and only on a handful of patients so far.
It all began last February with what Pettit thought was a pulled muscle. When the ache wouldn’t go away, he visited his family physician, who subsequently ordered a CT scan. The scan showed something unexpected — a small mass in Pettit’s right kidney. He and his physician decided to keep a close eye on the mass to see if it was growing.
Pettit, who lives in Bentonville and works as a paralegal for Wal-Mart, is an active 40-year-old who prefers to take the stairs up to his third-floor office. He is otherwise healthy, but he has a history of cancer in his family. Both his mother and father have had cancer surgery, so he was naturally concerned, particularly after observing what they had gone through.
Follow-up ultrasounds in May and July confirmed that the mass was, in fact, getting bigger. And to complicate matters, it was in a hard-to-get-to spot. One surgeon advised against surgery.
Pettit sought a second opinion from Zimmerman, who has undergone special training in robot-assisted surgery, using the da Vinci system. Da Vinci’s tiny remotely controlled, articulated “hands” and scopes go into tight spaces inside the body where a surgeon’s hands cannot go without requiring a large, invasive incision. By contrast, a da Vinci incision usually is no wider than a dime.
“It was very important to me that we get the cancer out, but it was also very important to me that I not be ‘taken out of my life’ for four or five or six months,” Pettit said. “I knew I didn’t want to go through what I had seen other people go through if I didn’t have to. It seemed like this was worth trying if it could take care of the problem and get me back to my life sooner.”
The spherical 2.2-centimeter encapsulated tumor was successfully removed. And just a few weeks later, Pettit knew he had made the right decision — historic or not.
“It looked like a marble that was stuck inside the wall of my kidney,” he observed. “And my recovery has been amazing. The swelling was gone within two to three weeks, and the area is not sore at all. There is very little scarring, and in just two months, I even started taking the stairs up to work again.”
Zimmerman explained that the size and location of Pettit’s tumor made using the da Vinci an appealing approach. “It was the right solution for this situation,” he said. “Not every kidney tumor would be a good fit for robot-assisted surgery, but this one was.”
He added that using technology to its fullest advantage (in the proper clinical context) ultimately benefits the patient, the surgeon and the community.