(PBN) — Rhode Island Hospital is the first and currently only hospital using the revolutionary Ion Platform – a robotic-assisted navigational bronchoscopy system that allows doctors to perform biopsies on small lung nodules.
Dr. Abbas El-Sayed Abbas, Brown Surgical Associates and Lifespan Chief of Thoracic Surgery, was pivotal in bringing the platform to the state.
“We have learned over the last 15 years that the best way to combat cancer is to catch it early,” said Dr. Abbas told the Providence Business News. “When we catch it early, we can offer, most of the time, a cure for the cancer.”
Abbas specializes in minimally invasive surgeries and showed an early interest in the potential of robot-assisted machines. The machine is over 90% effective, Abbas says, proving to be more accurate compared with a standard bronchoscopy.
“Without this, I wouldn’t be as confident of where that nodule really is in the lung,” Abbas said. “So I may miss it or may have to remove a big part of the lung to find it. This really hones us in and targets the nodule.”
