Standing outside the Edwards Comprehensive Cancer Center on the campus of Cabell Huntington Hospital recently, Duane Wise and his wife, Jo Ann, were on the verge of beginning another trip together.
This time, it wasn’t the cross-country flight back home to Anchorage, Alaska that was on their minds as much as Duane’s future as a cancer survivor. Just days before, Duane underwent surgery that was going to save his life. James Jensen, MD, performed a robotic prostatectomy on Duane, surgically removing his prostate gland and his cancer.
“When you have cancer in your body, you want it out,” Duane said. “I decided surgery was my best option.”
Choosing his surgeon was Duane’s first goal after he was diagnosed in October. A phone call from a friend quickly helped him accomplish that.
“My friend called and said to me. ‘This is life and death. You’ve just got to take care of it,’” Duane said. “And then he said Dr. Jensen’s the best and told me I should call him.”
The 4,500-mile trek from Alaska to West Virginia wasn’t started without extensive planning by the Wises. Duane and Jo Ann spent time online and reading about prostate cancer to learn about their best options.
“Why did I come here to West Virginia? Because I came for the very best doctor in the field,” Duane said. “After all of this, I am very confident that I found the best.”
Dr. Jensen calmed Duane and Jo Ann’s fears about any risks. Radical prostatectomy is a physically traumatic major surgery that carries risks of lasting incontinence and impotence. The da Vinci® Surgical System helps skilled surgeons reduce those risks and better perform this type of delicate surgery.
Robotic surgery isn’t actually performed by a robot, but by a surgeon stationed at a control console who controls robotic arms. The robotic system is similar to minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery because the surgical tools are placed through a number of small incisions.
“The needle is smaller than anything you could use in standard surgery, and the suture is vastly smaller,” Dr. Jensen said. “It’s similar to a modern jet airliner that’s flown by a computer. The pilot is there to use his or her judgment to facilitate the flight and the landing, and to deal with emergencies. Really, the computer greatly enhances the natural abilities of the surgeon, as the flight computer enhances the abilities of the pilot.”
Dr. Jensen has performed more than 500 surgeries using the daVinci Surgical System, including more than 100 robotic prostatectomy procedures at Cabell Huntington Hospital since his arrival little more than a year ago.
Dr. Jensen’s reputation and experience attracted Duane and convinced him to pass up other cancer centers and doctors who perform the same procedure. Duane’s own urologist in Alaska urged a visit to West Virginia.
“I have a very good doctor in Alaska, and he had done about five of this type of surgeries,” Duane said. “I made my decision and he told me he would have done the same thing. The more we read and talked to people, the more it came back to us that we needed to make this trip.”
Once at the Edwards Comprehensive Cancer Center, it took just a matter of days for Duane and Jo Ann to get settled, meet with Dr. Jensen and have the surgery. Duane was up later the same day and began healing. By the time he returned to Alaska, Duane was comfortably walking and already on the road to recovery.
“The recovery from this procedure was much better than what I expected,” he said. “By the next day I was up and was showered.”
For residents of this area who have to choose a treatment plan for prostate cancer, Duane has a recommendation: stay home.
“This was certainly worth it for me. Dr. Jensen is an excellent surgeon and a fine person,” Duane said. “If you have prostate cancer, Huntington and the Edwards Comprehensive Cancer Center is the best place to go with the best doctor. If you need fresh salmon or halibut, then you come to Alaska.”
Dr. Jensen said most patients would choose to keep their quality of life if given the choice when facing a medical struggle like prostate cancer. With minimally invasive surgeries like those available using the da Vinci® Surgical System, maintaining one’s quality of life after treatment is possible.
“We now have the opportunity to do an operation with very precise outcomes, preserving normal structures, maybe to the point that we should remove the word ‘radical’ from this operation,” Dr. Jensen said. “We do a very conservative operation. It’s radical in the sense of being a cancer operation, but it’s not radical in the sense of sacrificing structures which are important to the quality of life of the patient, in the name of removing a cancer.”
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