Cutting-edge care: latest technologies and therapies available from Indiana health-care providers.

• Author: Held, Shari
• Position: HEALTH CARE

TECHNOLOGY CHANGES so rapidly that it is often difficult to know who is doing what and where. Here is our annual look at cutting-edge technology and techniques that help keep our Indiana hospitals among the leaders in health care.

Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, Indianapolis. The new $150 million patient care building at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center (IUSCC) is slated to open this August.

"The actual demographics of the state of Indiana and the fact that the incidence of cancer was rising ... was the impetus for us to build this facility," says Debra Uhl, COO for Indiana University Hospital. "It represents a combined commitment between Clarian Health and IU School of Medicine to deliver top-notch, integrated, state-of-the-art care and to bring different practitioners together so we can assess patients and provide prompter service than we can today."

The Center is the only National Cancer Institute designated cancer center in the state that treats patients. There are only 63 centers nationwide. It is one of the nation's leading hospitals when it comes to two procedures: minimally invasive hepatopancreaticobiliary (HPB) surgery for pancreatic cancer and transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM) for rectal cancer.

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Minimally invasive HPB surgery techniques involve much smaller incisions, so recovery time is much improved. IU is one of the top three hospitals in the nation in terms of volume for pancreatic tumors and pancreatic surgery. IUSCC has been performing TEM for less than a year--often on an outpatient basis. It spares patients from having an incision and a colostomy.

Lutheran Health Network, Fort Wayne.

Recent studies have shown a direct correlation between decreased kidney function and higher risk for other medical problems. The more kidney tissue saved, the better for the patient. Radical nephrectomy (removal of the entire kidney and surrounding area) is only performed when absolutely necessary. But until recently many patients had to choose between open surgery with a partial nephrectomy (in which as much kidney tissue is spared as possible) or less invasive laparoscopic radical surgery which removed the entire kidney.

"To try to combine those two benefits, we, one, try to take only the tumor out and, two, we try to do this laparoscopically," says Dr. Erik Weise, urologist and medical director of robotic surgery at Lutheran Hospital. "That is the best of both worlds."

Weise, who has been with Lutheran Health Network for two years, has taken partial laparoscopic nephrectomy to another level by using the da Vinci Surgical System. The benchmark for a center of excellence for this procedure is that it is used on one out of every five patients with a kidney mass. The first year Weise performed the surgery, he hit that benchmark. Since then he has surpassed it--in the subsequent six months, his numbers increased to 32 percent; the next six months they reached 49 percent and in the most recent six-month block they reached 67 percent.

"What that means, is that out of all patients that walk through our door with a kidney mass, two-thirds will have laparoscopic nephrectomy and keep most of their kidney," Weise says. "This is huge given the fact that we are saving heat attacks, strokes, hospital admissions and lives. The [da Vinci] robot has taken me from [the benchmark] one-in-five to two-out-of-three."

It's also made Lutheran Hospital Fort Wayne the world leader in the number of robotic partial nephrectomies performed.

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Deaconess Health System, Evansville. In November 2007, Deaconess began offering patients a state-of-the-art procedure for treating inter-cranial aneurysms. Aneurysms develop when a weakened or diseased area of a blood vessel bulges or "balloons" out. Most people don't realize they have an aneurysm until it ruptures, when it can cause life-threatening bleeding. In the past, open cranial surgery was the mode of treatment. In the new technique, brought to Deaconess by Dr. Neil Troffkin, a catheter is threaded from a vessel in...