Carol McCloy has a story to tell her grandchildren, she said, about how she made medical history in southwestern Pennsylvania.

"It just blows my mind that they were able to do such serious surgery with a robot," said Mrs. McCloy, 64, of Mount Pleasant Borough.

On Friday, Daniel Clark, of Excela Latrobe Hospital, used the da Vinci Si HD, the most sophisticated surgical robotics system available, to remove nearly 9 inches of Mrs. McCloy's diseased colon.

"It was beyond my expectations," he said.

Excela Health System is the region's first medical system to have the latest surgical robot that was released in April by Intuitive Surgical Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif.

It is the world's only surgical technology that provides three-dimensional, high-definition viewing of the surgical field. The cost was $1.5 million.

"There are only a few on the East Coast, and none in this region," Jim Jackson, clinical sales manager, said last week at an open house when Excela showed off a mobile model.

There are earlier da Vinci systems at several Pittsburgh hospitals, he added, including UPMC, Allegheny General and UPMC Shadyside, "but not every hospital even has those."

Dr. Clark was impressed with his first experience.

"It was beyond my expectations," he said. "The visualization was even better than I anticipated."

Dr. Clark trained in robotics-assisted surgery at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colo., in 1989-1994 when the technique was new and he was a military surgeon. He was on staff at a hospital in Kansas in 1997 when he became the 19th surgeon in the United States to use voice-activated robotics.

He joined Excela Latrobe seven years ago and specializes in minimally invasive surgery. Earlier this year, the hospital opened a newly remodeled MIS suite with a fully integrated, voice-controlled Sidne HD system.

That was state-of-the art, but, he said, "the robotics is beyond state of the art. This will change the landscape of minimally invasive surgery."

The new equipment has four robotic arms that enter the patient through incisions no larger than a dime. The surgeon sits at an ergonomically designed console while viewing a three-dimensional image magnified 10 times with highly accurate depth perception.

According to Intuitive Surgical, the motion technology replicates the experience of open surgery by providing natural eye-hand-instrument alignment, and the EndoWrist instrumentation provides dexterity and range of motion greater than the human hand.

"With the robot, I had the ability to sweep things aside with wrist action, instead of having straight instrumentation," Dr. Clark said about the surgery on Mrs. McCloy.

"A lot of dissection is done with a sweeping motion. You make a little nick and then sweep the tissue aside with the motion of the hand. I was able to reach around and move things out of the way. It was fantastic."

That was especially important, he added, because the patient had scar tissue and adhesions from infections from years of diverticulitis.

Dr. Clark and Dr. Lorenzo Bucci trained on the system in Florida, then spent two weeks practicing on the new equipment at Excela Latrobe.

Dr. Bucci had a patient who agreed to the technique for removing her gall bladder, a fairly routine procedure that's usually performed laparoscopically with a small incision.

"We wanted to first do something straightforward with the robot, for the robot experience," said Dr. Clark, who assisted Dr. Bucci on Friday. "We were very comfortable with that operation."

Then Dr. Bucci assisted Dr. Clark with the colon resection. Also present were Dr. Shri Chalikonda, from the Cleveland Clinic, who is experienced with the da Vinci Si HD, and Craig Nicholson, clinical sales representative for Intuitive, who is trained on the system.

Mrs. McCloy was pleased to be Dr. Clark's first patient.

"He suggested this a couple of days before my surgery," she told the Post-Gazette on Monday, the same day she was discharged from the hospital. "He talked so highly about it, about how much quicker you can heal. I said I would go for it, and he was all excited and I was, too."

Dr. Clark had previously performed a colon resection on Mrs. McCloy's friend, but operated through an 8-inch abdominal incision. So Mrs. McCloy had a point of reference for comparison.

"My friend was in the hospital for over a week and she had a lot of restrictions," she said. "I was in for three days and I can go up and down the steps and I can shower today. It's totally amazing."

Not everyone is a candidate for the robotics-assisted surgery. The technique is appropriate for procedures that require more flexibility in tight spaces or awkward angles, for instance, in prostate surgery.

"Today I did a giant para-esophageal hernia, where half of the patient's stomach was up in her left chest," Dr. Clark said. "I did that laparoscopically and reconstructed the diaphragm with mesh. We can do it that way, but I just felt that it would have been easier with the robot."

The new system is a draw for surgeons, said Robin Jennings, Excela director of communications. For instance, the promise of the da Vinci Si HD was the clincher for gynecologist Kelly DeVoogd to sign on with Excela in August.

"Dr. DeVoogd trained with the last generation [of da Vinci system] at West Penn Hospital, and surgeons want to work with what they trained with," Ms. Jennings said. "So technology like this is important in recruiting."

Excela surgeons Geof Bisignani, Norman Gebrosky and Whitney Snowman also are planning to be trained with the new system.

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