Urology surgeon in The Woodlands reaches milestone

THE WOODLANDS, Texas – Dr. Steven Sukin recently celebrated a major milestone -- 500 surgeries using the da Vinci robot.

As a urologist, most of his surgeries are quite complicated, including prostate removal and kidney cancer procedures.

Da Vinci allows for minimally invasive techniques and faster healing.

Sukin first heard of da Vinci when he was a resident at Baylor College of Medicine.

"It came out in my last year, but it would take 10 hours to do a surgery – whereas an open surgery could be done in two hours," he said. "But in my second year of practice, those cases could be done robotically in three to four hours. I realized this was the future.'"

Sukin is now on the third-generation da Vinci robot.

"The first robot was very challenging because the instruments didn't quite reach the deep pelvis area and didn't have the same ability to easily manipulate the surgical instruments," Sukin said. "The second generation provided better imaging, and the instruments reached more difficult areas.

"This third generation has the ability to hyper-focus on the area of the body you're working on, but at the same time if you want to switch to another area, the entire robot can shift without having to undock the robot first."

Sukin began training on da Vinci at Methodist in the Houston Medical Center, and soon after headed north to The Woodlands. He was the first to perform urological robotic surgery in the north Houston area.

He's been with Texas Urology Specialists since 2010.

"The great thing about robotic surgery is it's now the standard of care," Sukin said. "That's very exciting."

For more information about Dr. Sukin, visit www.drstevensukinurology.com.