BUFFALO, N.Y. — There’s a preconceived notion of surgery that involves a long, painful hospital stay. But what if it didn’t have to be that way?

At Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, there’s a robot being used for lung cancer surgery. A quarter of patients are discharged the day after the procedure. Many more never need narcotic pain medication.

Fully vaccinated and catching up with the doctor who saved her life, Deetta Hill is proof that taking chances on the unknown, might just work out for the best.

“I had my surgery done on the right side in 2017; it was not well surgery, and it was tough,” Hill said.

Following that lung surgery, a Plexiglass tube drained her back during a days-long hospital stay. Hill was on hydrocodone for months. Then in 2019, Hill found out she needed lung surgery on her left side.

“This time I was petrified, because I knew it would be robotic,” Hill said.

But, in her late 70s, trying a less invasive thoracic surgery was a chance she needed to take.

“I went home the next day, believe it or not,” Hill said.

Even more amazing, she didn’t need any narcotics. It was all thanks to a revolutionary piece of technology, controlled by Dr. Mark Jajkowski. As the director for thoracic surgery at Catholic Health, he saw a common occurrence with the da Vinci XI surgical system.

“Four out of five not needing scripts at home, and then 30% not needing scripts at all, it was pretty amazing,” Jajkowski said.

In April 2016, Dr. Jajkowski started using it.

“Known as the robot, but it’s technically not a robot,” he said.

He’s used it for a number of procedures, but when it comes to lung cancer surgeries, he noticed something pretty phenomenal.

“When I come to see them the next morning, they [the patient] asked, 'can I go home today?' " Jajkowski recalled.

The average hospital stay after lung surgery is four days. More than 25% of Jajkowski’s patients are going home the day after, and 85% are headed home after two days.

The use of narcotics to manage pain was down significantly, too. It got Jajkowski thinking and keeping track. Now he’s hoping that taking patients inside his operating room will do two things: get a lung cancer screening if you’re considered at risk, and let people know there are major advancements in technology to help make surgical procedures less invasive.

“The muscles of the chest wall aren’t divided; the ports just push them,” Jajkowski explained. “So there is no cutting of the muscle.”

That alone has made the difference for Hill who still has issues with her right side, the side the robot was not used on. Her advice to others, especially those who are elderly: Don’t let the word "robot" scare you; it could actually save your life.

“Longer recoveries, mean longer medications, could mean maybe a shorter outcome for us,” Hill said. 

Dr. Jajkowski is now hoping to write his results and publish them for other surgeons to start tracking and maybe use this device. He also wants to share the importance of lung cancer screening. If you’re a smoker, you can now get screenings started at the age of 50. Those should be done annually.