Self Regional Healthcare urologist, Dr. Todd Hansen, explains the benefits of robotically-assisted surgery during a talk at Lander University on the evening of Sept. 21. This program was entitled, “Surgical Robotics: What’s In It For Greenwood?” and was presented by the Self Regional Healthcare Foundation and the Greenwood SC Chamber of Commerce. Photo by Laura B. Wood.
Lander University hosted a program entitled “Surgical Robotics: What’s In It For Greenwood?” on the evening of Sept. 20. This program was presented by the Self Regional Healthcare Foundation and the Greenwood SC Chamber of Commerce.
The program featured Self Regional Healthcare’s newest board-certified urologist, Dr. Todd Hansen, as the featured speaker. Hansen is brand new to Greenwood, but is a surgical veteran who has performed hundreds of robot-assisted surgeries. He received his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and his medical degree from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. His residency was completed at the University of New Mexico.
Hansen’s experience with surgical robots was a huge point of interest for Self Regional. With “hundreds” of surgeries with the use of robotics under his belt, Hansen said that he has “long lost count” of how many he has performed. “One patient asked me that and the representative told me I’d done over 500 at that point, and that was many years ago.”
Hansen walked the audience through the benefits of surgical robots, and why Self Regional Healthcare’s expansion into this method of surgery is beneficial to the Lakelands community. “We want to increase the number and types of minimally invasive surgeries that we perform,” he said. “Instead of being a place that sends patients off to other areas, we can be very much a landing area for others to get referred to.”
“Another really important goal was to maximize the expansion of women’s health services,” he said. “One thing I began to recognize is that a lot of women’s health is getting referred out of the Lakelands area. This is something I believe our hospital can be incredibly successful at.”