Prince William dons scrubs to watch cancer surgeons use robot technology and jokes: 'You can tell the doctors have done Playstation'

Francesca Gillett10 January 2018

Prince William donned scrubs to watch pioneering robotic surgery to remove mouth tumours at a leading cancer hospital in Chelsea.

The Duke of Cambridge joked the surgeons used technology which is “the same as Playstation gear” and watched tumours being removed from patients with the help of machines at the Royal Marsden Hospital.

"You can see all the doctors have done Playstation,” he told cancer patient Joe Omar. “They let me watch but not to have a go."

The Da Vinci robot allows surgeons to remotely cut away the cancerous growths as they stand a few feet away from the patient, using two handheld controls connected to a 3D monitor.

The Duke of Cambridge joins surgeons at the Royal Marsden in Chelsea.
PA

Consultants have been taught the skills needed to handle the robot, which avoids the need for major invasive procedures.

Dressed in a blue top, trousers and cap and wearing a pair of slip-on rubber Crocs, the future king, 35, watched with fascination as Anne White, 67, from Newton Abbott, Devon, had a tumour cut away from her tongue.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge speaks to patient Will Cowell.
Getty Images

He peered at the 3D monitor as lead surgeon Professor Vin Paleri talked him through the procedure and then later watched another operation to remove a tumour from the base of 63-year-old Charles Ludlow's oesophagus.

William, who is president of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, then talked about the skills of the surgeon when he met cancer patient Joe Omar, 63, and his wife Lynn, 59, and their daughter Leila, 27.

Mr Omar, a retired anaesthetist from Sutton, south London, worked at the Royal Marsden in the 1980s where he met his radiographer wife, and was having tests after a tumour was removed from his bladder.

William told him: "It's fascinating watching the robot work, it's so precise, you see it up close and you can really see how the human body is and how it works.

"You're literally going right into the tumour so you see exactly with precision where the tumour is - it's incredible - I was really, really impressed with it."

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