Severance Hospital has become the world's first single medical institution to perform 50,000 robotic surgeries, the hospital announced Tuesday.
The milestone was reached when Ham Won-sik, director of the Robot and Endoscopic Surgery Center and a professor of urology, recently performed a partial nephrectomy using a robot on a kidney cancer patient, the hospital said. It marks the first time any single medical institution worldwide has reached 50,000 robotic surgeries. Since beginning Korea's first robotic surgery in 2005, Severance Hospital has maintained steep growth, reaching 10,000 cases in 2013, 20,000 in 2018, and 30,000 in 2021. The latest 50,000 mark came 28 months after reaching 40,000 cases in 2024.
Severance Hospital currently operates 12 surgical robots and two training robots. The hospital has five single-port robots, which make only one surgical incision, the largest number in Korea. Severance Hospital performs robotic surgeries across a wide range of clinical departments, including urology, thyroid and endocrine surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, otolaryngology, colorectal surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, thoracic surgery, and breast surgery.
"We will continue to strengthen patient-tailored precision medicine based on advanced surgical technology and clinical expertise," said Lee Kang-young, director of Severance Hospital.
