Surgeon Uses Robot to Save Woman's Uterus

Oct. 4 -- Joanne Ulrich couldn't wait to give birth to her first baby, until a routine prenatal checkup indicated something was wrong.

"On my first visit to the doctor's I was three months pregnant," Ulrich told ABCNEWS' Dr. Nancy Snyderman on Good Morning America. "At that time they said are you sure on your due date because you're measuring a month further and they thought I was carrying twins at the time and I said well it may be that I do have fibroid tumors."

Ulrich, who appeared further along in her pregnancy due to the size of the tumors, which often tend to grow during pregnancy, delivered her boy six weeks early.

Doctors told Ulrich the baby would be her first and last. They decided her fibroid tumors needed to be surgically removed and suggested a hysterectomy, but Ulrich search for an alternative instead.

The new mother found the "Mona Lisa," a seven-foot surgical robot that helps doctors perform fibroid removal surgery without damaging the uterus.

Dr. Arnold Advincula, the gynecological surgeon who performed Ulrich's surgery, says the robot's hands allow him to perform surgery in a way his own do not. The robot arms rotate a full 360 degrees.

‘Mona Lisa — Women Adore You’

During surgery with Mona Lisa, Advincula looks through a lens on a console which allows him to see three-dimensional imaging inside the patient's body. Two hand grips and foot pedals allow him to manipulate the robot within the patient. Every one of the doctor's hand movements is translated by the robotic arms.

"Its middle arm is the camera arm," Advincula explained. "Its right and left arms hold the instruments which serve as an extension of my arm, when I sit at the console and do the surgery."

Advincula said the robot named Mona Lisa will allow many women with fibroid tumors to keep their uterus. They affect roughly one out of four Caucasian and one in two African-American women. Of the 600,000 hysterectomies performed in the country each year, 30 percent are due to uterine fibroids.