ROCK HILL, S.C. — Piedmont Medical Center hosted hundreds of Rock Hill students for its second annual Robotic Symposium where they got the chance to experience surgical robotic systems firsthand.
The experience opened the students eyes to a new career path, and Channel 9’s Eli Brand learned the technology is relatively new for the doctors too.
“It’s very exciting because I’ve always thought about being a surgeon,” Chloe Cantrell, an eleventh grader at Northwestern High School in Rock Hill, said.
On Tuesday, she along with other students were able to get their hands on robotics current surgeons use on the job every day.
Piedmont Medical Center uses the robots in different operations, ranging from knee and hip replacements to brain surgery.
For current surgeons, they say robotic work is going to end up becoming the norm for almost all future surgeons.
“I think a lot of the surgeons coming out of training maybe have only seen a handful of the conventional way, whereas when I was a resident, too many years ago to mention, it wasn’t even on the horizon,” Brian Tallerico said.
Tallerico specializes in joint replacements. He has been using a Stryker robot for years and says it made him more efficient. He says the change from hands on surgery to robots happened at a speed he didn’t expect.
“We all knew about it a few years ago, my colleagues locally here, and now using the robotic assistance and in Charlotte more and more are using it, so it’s nationwide,” Tallerico said.
For Cantrell, she says surgery is by no means easy, but now that she got her hands on the technology, she says she is more excited about her future.
“It was very hard, but the upgrade definitely made it a lot easier,” she said.
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