A Robot Saves A Spleen (Really)

On Dec. 24, 2015, splenic cyst surgery made an exciting advancement, thanks to a creative surgical team and a robot. At the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, a patient in their early 30s with a large splenic cyst underwent what may be the world’s first auto-transplant (re-implantation of a patient’s own organ) of the spleen.

The surgical team, led by Dr. Pier Giulianotti, didn’t plan to do something unusual that day. At the start of the minimally invasive, robot-assisted surgery, they expected to remove the cyst and part of the spleen. But they discovered the cyst was located in the center of the spleen, making partial removal difficult.

“The body can compensate without the spleen, but because the patient was young and healthy otherwise, we wanted to avoid completely removing the spleen,” said Dr. Giulianotti, chief of general, minimally-invasive and robotic surgery at UI Health.

Instead of performing a full splenectomy, they removed the spleen and kept it alive through cold perfusion (effectively putting it on ice). They cut the cyst out of the spleen and returned the cyst-free organ to the patient’s abdomen, reconnecting the highly vascular organ to its blood supply.

Dr. Giulianotti credits the surgical robot for making the intricate surgery possible. “Without the use of the robot, we may have had to opt for a total splenectomy, which would mean the patient would have had to be very careful about infections for the rest of their life.”

The surgical robot “opens up the possibility of preserving spleen function in other patients with centrally-located cysts,” he said.