Robotic Gynecologic Surgery: 5 Tips for Easing Recovery

can use minimally invasive, robot-assisted surgical technology. This cutting-edge approach to surgery greatly reduces collateral damage and side effects and speeds up recovery.

That said, it’s still surgery, which means there’s still some recovery involved after robot-assisted gynecologic surgery, whether it’s a hysterectomy, myomectomy (fibroid removal), or some other procedure.

At Women’s Clinic of the Rio Grande Valley, you’re in excellent hands for your upcoming procedure — Dr. Fernando Otero is a leading expert in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery. While Dr. Otero and the team will expertly handle our end, we want to share some recovery tips to help you prepare.

A quick word about minimally invasive, robotic surgery

Before we dive into recovery tips, we want to briefly explain why minimally invasive, robot-assisted surgery delivers better results than traditional open surgery.

With this technique, we use robotic arms guided by Dr. Otero’s hands, along with a high-definition camera, to perform the procedure. Since we don’t need the same manual and visual access as open surgery, we only need to make very small incisions, if we make incisions at all — many times we can perform gynecologic surgery through your vagina.

Given that there’s far less collateral damage with minimally invasive surgery, there’s less blood loss and risk of infection, which translates to a shorter recovery.

Common procedures where we can apply this technology include:

• Hysterectomies — about half a million are performed annually in the United States
• Myomectomies — about 30,000 procedures are performed each year in the US
• Endometriosis adhesion removal — endometriosis affects 1 out of 10 women of reproductive age, and some require surgery to restore fertility

There are more examples, but these are the most common.

Recovering well from your minimally invasive surgery

Now let’s get to the topic at hand and review some great tips to ease your recovery. As we mentioned, your recovery journey is much smoother thanks to our minimally invasive approach and robotic help — often turning weeks into days — but you should still give your body time and space to heal.

To that end, here are some handy recovery tips:

1. Create a recovery station in your house

Whether you get to go home the same day or after a short hospital stay, you’ll want to take it easy for the first day or two at home. So, before your surgery, why not create a little recovery nest where everything is within easy reach — remotes, glasses, etc.?

2. Cook some meals in advance

When you first get home, you’re not going to want to cook, so we suggest making some meals in advance of your surgery. Your post-surgery self will thank you.

3. Arrange for help

During the first few days, we don’t want you running around as usual. Instead, we recommend that you enlist some help for the first few days, whether it’s going shopping or driving the kids somewhere.

4. Gets pads

After your minimally invasive surgery, you may experience some vaginal bleeding and discharge, so equip yourself with some pads. Never use tampons after surgery.

5. Avoid lifting and strenuous exercise

During the first few weeks, we want you to avoid lifting heavy objects and strenuous exercise. Your reproductive system underwent a procedure and, even if we use minimally invasive techniques, it still needs some time to heal and reset.

We also want to assure you that we provide complete, detailed aftercare instructions and are available to you throughout your recovery.

If you have more questions about preparing for minimally invasive gynecologic surgery, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our offices in McAllen or Edinburg, Texas.