WITNESS: A prostate cancer patient trusts in a robot

Douglas Hamilton has been a correspondent for Reuters for many years and is currently the Bureau Chief for the Balkans, based in Belgrade. In this story, he relates how a diagnosis of cancer led him to the United States for robotic surgery, a new procedure using advanced technology to save lives with less pain, fewer complications, and a better chance of a full return to normal.

By Douglas Hamilton

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scary as it sounds, robotic surgery is taking a lot of the dread out of prostate cancer.

My experience of the 21st century treatment began at New York Presbyterian Hospital a few days into 2008, with an introduction by surgically masked Chip Berryhill.

"There's the robot, and over there is the console where Dr. Tewari will operate," he instructed casually, as I climbed onto a precariously narrow operating bench halfway between them.

Faintly menacing, the four-armed da Vinci machine stood against the wall, waiting to be moved into position once I had lost consciousness under the anesthetic.

Berryhill is physician assistant to Dr. Ash Tewari, who is recognized as one of the world's top practitioners of a procedure changing the face of modern medicine.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cancer killer for men, after lung cancer. A simple blood test now helps detect it, before it spreads. But eradication of the threat through surgery carries risks men dread -- incontinence and impotence.

"It's a tough call," admitted Prof. Wolfgang Aulitzky of Vienna's Confraternitaet clinic, after diagnosing my cancer in October. There were no symptoms, just a high score on the PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test.