Mater recently welcomed world renowned Gynaecology Oncologist Dr Peter Lim to join our gynaecology oncology team to refine their da Vinci robot surgical system techniques for complex gynaecology patients.

The da Vinci Surgical System is a robotic surgical system designed to facilitate complex surgery using a minimally invasive approach, controlled by a surgeon from a console.

Dr Lim said he was honoured to visit Mater.

“What I love about these trips is that I learn more than I teach,” Dr Lim said.

“People ask me questions that I’d never thought of! When you’re working in your own silo so to speak, you do things a certain way, and the best way to be a student is to be a teacher. As the expression goes, it’s the students who are the teachers,” he said.

While the da Vinci robot has been at Mater for three years, Dr Lim has been working with robot technology for about 11 years.

“When I first started out people thought the technology was a gimmick and would not take off, but robotics surgery has completely revolutionised how we perform surgeries,” he said.

“Initially it was urologic surgery that adopted this technology followed by gynaecologic surgery. Now the biggest adoption of this technology is general surgery and now it’s across all different types of surgery specialties and it’s all for the better,” Dr Lim said.

Mater Gynaecological Oncologist Dr Lew Perrin explains it’s for these reasons Mater invited Dr Lim.

“We don’t see the same amount of morbidity with gynaecological surgery like we used to,” Dr Perrin said.

“For example our endometrial cancer patients used to undergo full, open surgery and they’d have huge scars with significant complications such as infections and blood clots, but now we use keyhole surgery.

“As medical professionals we’re continuously looking for ways improve patient outcomes and we’re keen to see how we can take our surgery to the next level,” Dr Perrin said.