Dr. David B. Samadi is the Vice Chairman of the Department of Urology and Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.[1] He is a board-certified urologist and an oncologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of urologic diseases, prostate cancer, kidney cancer and bladder cancer, and specializes in advanced minimally invasive treatments for prostate cancer, including laparoscopic radical prostatectomy and laparoscopic robotic radical prostatectomy.[2] Dr. Samadi developed his own SMART (Samadi Modified Advanced Robotic Technique) surgery for the robotic removal of cancerous prostates.
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Born and raised in the Persian Jewish community of Iran, at age 15 Samadi and his younger brother left in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution.[3] They continued their education in Belgium and London before coming to the United States where Samadi completed high school in Roslyn, NY. [4] After high school, Samadi attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook and earned his degree in biochemistry on a full scholarship. The diversity of his background greatly benefits his medical practice and his interactions with patients from all over the world.
Samadi completed his postgraduate training in general surgery at Montefiore Medical Center and in urology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. He completed an oncology fellowship in urology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a robotic radical prostatectomy fellowship at Henri Mondor Hospital Creteil in France under the mentorship of Professor Claude Abbou, MD. Along with Dr. Abbou, Samadi performed the first 11 da Vinci robotic prostate surgeries in the world. Dr. Samadi is fellowship trained in laparoscopy and robotic prostatectomy surgery and is an internationally recognized expert in both fields.
He is one of the very few urologic surgeons in the United States trained in oncology, open, laparoscopic, and robotic surgery. He is also the first surgeon in the United States to successfully perform a robotic surgery redo.[5] To date, Samadi has performed over 3,600 successful da Vinci prostate surgeries, more than any other prostate cancer surgeon in all of New York. As a result of his surgical experience, Samadi is considered a leader and pioneer in robotic surgery performing 15 surgeries per week.
Having completed fellowship training in both urologic oncology and laparoscopy, Samadi's technique as described below builds on oncologic principles learned with open radical prostatectomy and transferred to a robotic approach.[6] In the technique he uses at Mount Sinai, he recreates the classic open anatomic technique as closely as possible on the robotic platform.
The benefits of Dr. Samadi’s unique procedure are twofold. First, he does not suture the dorsal vein complex at the beginning of surgery, allowing him greater control over the length of the urethra at the completion of surgery. The longer the urethra, the less leaking and incontinence a man experiences after surgery. Dr. Samadi is able to achieve continence rates of 97% at one year.
Second, Dr. Samadi does not open the endopelvic fascia, thereby leaving this tissue intact and sparing the tiny nerve bundles that surround the prostate and control sexual function. As such, Dr. Samadi is able to achieve 87% sexual potency rates at 1 year.[7]
Samadi developed his unique SMART (Samadi Modified Advanced Robotic Technique) surgical procedure after years of perfecting his successful robotic surgery method, to improve sexual function and urinary control results. The signature of Samadi's SMART Surgery program is that he personally performs the entire surgery from beginning to the end. For this reason, patients from all over the world seek his expertise.
Dr. Samadi has demonstrated his SMART surgery technique worldwide, educating international surgeons and sharing his robotic prostatectomy expertise. His surgical outreach has included Athens, Greece, Israel and other European countries. In December 2010, Samadi became the first surgeon to perform a live SMART surgery robotic prostatectomy at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, northern Israel, and Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel. In March 2011 Dr. Samadi spoke about robotic prostatectomy surgery at the Hospital Metropolitano de Santiago in the Dominican Republic. In October 2011 he was the first surgeon to perform the procedure in the Netherlands, doing so in collaboration with Dr. Jelle Barentsz, a specialist in MRI and Urogenital diseases at The Dutch Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center.
Robotic prostatectomy is the latest in minimally invasive surgery, offering the most recent advances in robotics and computer technology for a patient with prostate cancer. The main benefits include a shorter hospital stay, keyhole incisions resulting in less blood loss, little pain, low risk of infection, quick healing, small scars, and minimal risk of becoming impotent or incontinent.[8]
The surgery is performed entirely by the surgeon, who sits at a console in the operating room and views the surgery on an enhanced 3D High Definition monitor. The surgeon uses joysticks that track movements, which are then translated in real-time to the scaled movements of a robotic device that enables the operation to take place. The ends of the robotic arms are fitted with miniature surgical instruments that are capable of moving in any direction. The EndoWrist instruments can be directed with extreme accuracy and precision.
The da Vinci Surgical System allows surgeons to operate for longer periods of time with less fatigue and virtually no hand tremor. It provides delicate handling of the prostate tissue permitting extremely accurate cutting of nerve tissue. Five small quarter sized incisions are made into the patient’s abdomen, three on one side of the navel and two on the other side. The fine robotic arms equipped with tiny surgical instruments enter through these ports and do the surgery. There is no computer programming of surgical instructions.
As an added benefit, this system completely removes any cancer cells that are at the surrounding edge of the prostate. The elimination of any malignant cells at the surgical margins is critical to patient recovery.[9] After the incision sites have healed, patients report a return of their sexual drive and their ability to attain an erection during sexual intercourse.[10] They are also able to regain control of their bladder and report no problems with urination.
Patients report minimal discomfort after robotic surgery as opposed to traditional open surgery which involves large traumatic incisions to the patient, requires a longer healing time with the possibility of infection at the surgical site and considerable scarring. With the da Vinci system, the small one-centimeter keyhole incisions allow for enhanced surgical maneuvers that would be impossible manually.
Samadi is founder and Director of Mount Sinai's Robotic Fellowship Program.[11] It is dedicated to clinical and surgical excellence by providing exceptional opportunities for doctors who have completed their residency to train directly with Samadi. Fellows usually will spend a year working as a full-time, paid assistant to Samadi. All surgeries are performed by Samadi. Fellowships are awarded based on merit, along with potential to contribute to the fields of urology, oncology, and minimally invasive surgery.
The Robotic Fellowship Program has three components: Medical research, clinical training with an emphasis on robotic, laparoscopic, and renal surgical methods, and treatment of urological diseases; which includes prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers.
Samadi frequently presents his clinical research at medical conferences as a subject matter expert nationally and internationally.[12] He has been a guest speaker in major academic lecture series'. Over the past decade, Samadi has been actively involved in training and proctoring urologists across the country and internationally.[13] In 2011 Dr. Samadi participated in the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine’s inaugural year in New York, performing a live robotic prostatectomy procedure for exceptional high school students.
Samadi is a member of the American Urological Association and the American Medical Association. Samadi is included in Castle Connolly Medical's America's Top Doctors. New York Magazine named Samadi to their Best Doctors List in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Samadi is also a frequent contributor on the panel of Fox News' Medical "A-Team".
RoboticOncology.com – David B. Samadi, M.D. QPNY – Interview with David B. Samadi, M.D. ABC TV – David B. Samadi, M.D., Discusses Benefits of Robotic Prostatectomy Wall Street Journal - Prostate Cancer: Weighing Options wowowow.com - Prostate Cancer And Your Man: What You Need To Know Mount Sinai Faculty Practice Associates: David B. Samadi, MD Physician Profile Mount Sinai Medical Center: David B. Samadi, MD Physician Profile