Hackensack University Medical Center Is New Jersey’s Busiest Robotic Surgery Center for Lung Cancer
Top 3 metro area center offers shorter length of stay and collaborative surgery expertise
Hackensack University Medical Center is a leader in the metro area and leads the state of New Jersey in robotic lung surgery volumes. And, with greater experience, the center also achieves leading outcomes.
The center shot up the U.S. News and World Report national specialty rankings to No. 24 last year when the ranking system was adjusted to include patients who were discharged home earlier than 3 days, which at Hackensack represents more than 80% of our patients. The national average for these procedures when done elsewhere is 3 to 5 days. In fact, half of the center's robotic lung surgery patients return home in one day or less after surgery.
The center has focused heavily on opportunities to improve outcomes over the last eight years, including reducing the length of stay, which correlates to fewer complications and enhancing and optimizing post-op pain control.
“Our primary goal in these high-risk patients, operating on a delicate structure, is for the surgeon to do the operation in the way that best contributes to both the patient’s long-term cancer outcome as well as their short-term postoperative experience. We have been able to show that you can prioritize both of these endpoints, and that patients do significantly better as a consequence,“ said thoracic surgeon Nabil P. Rizk, M.D.
Surgeons include the post-op experience in their success measures for each procedure, taking care, for example, to avoid leakage of air on the lung surface, which results in a lengthier stay. Surgeons also round daily as a team, and perform surgery in pairs, offering multiple views on each clinical case and the opportunity to learn from peer experiences. Patients experience the same outcomes, whether their surgeon has three years or 20 years of experience because the surgeons function as a team and provide input to each other in and outside of the surgical setting.
Learn more about innovative pulmonology and thoracic surgery care at Hackensack University Medical Center.
