Ten-year Experience of the da Vinci Robotic Surgery At Severance Yonsei University Hospital in Korea

Our hospital has started laparoscopic cholecystectomy in 1991, and thereafter many surgeons have been trained in the era of laparoscopic and minimally invasive surgery. Since then numerous procedures have been applied for laparoscopic surgery, and many patients have benefited as a result. We have performed the first automated surgery in Korea using the Automated Endoscopic System for Optimal Positioning (AESOP) in June, 1996 With the help of Inbae Yoon's inspiration [2] and donation, our hospital has started the "I.B. Yoon Multi-Specialty Endoscopic Research & Training Center" in 1998. We then started the "Severance Robot and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center" in March 2005. These infrastructures enables us the expansion of laparoscopic surgery and inspires many surgeons to understand the principles and equipments of laparoscopic and robotic surgery. We performed the first robotic surgery using the da Vinci system in July, 2005. During a 10 years period after introducing the da Vinci surgical system in 2005 we have performed more than 15000 cases of robotic surgery successfully. With collaboration between medicine and robotic engineering, we are now developing our own version of Korean robotic system.