“There is an enormous opportunity to improve the surgical care of children,” says Johns Hopkins pediatric urologist Ardavan Akhavan, who specializes in minimally invasive surgery. Akhavan joined the Johns Hopkins urology faculty from Seattle Children’s Hospital, University of Washington Medical Center, and his job is an exciting one: to build a minimally invasive pediatric surgery program. 

“Johns Hopkins is one of the first children’s hospitals in the country to have the newest robotic surgery system,” says Akhavan, “which will allow us to expand the limits of minimally invasive surgery in children and offer the most advanced surgical technologies to our smallest patients.”

Over the last few years, the applications for pediatric minimally invasive urology have expanded dramatically, he adds. “Minimally invasive surgery has revolutionized the care for patients as young as 6 months by allowing for smaller incisions, decreased pain, shorter hospitalization and quicker recovery,” he says. Many procedures can be done on an outpatient basis.

Akhavan uses robotic, laparoscopic and endoscopic techniques to treat a variety of disorders involving the kidney, ureter, bladder, gonads and genitals with minimal to no incisions.

“For correction of a ureteropelvic junction obstruction,” he says, “we can perform a robotic pyeloplasty. For surgical repair of vesicoureteral reflux, we offer robotic ureteral reimplantation. The list is ever-expanding.”

When he’s not in the operating room or clinic, Akhavan is involved in research, working to correlate surgical skills with patient outcomes to standardize the training and evaluation of robotic surgeons.

“Robotic surgery is as operator-dependent as any other form of surgery,” he says. “We hope our research will help establish the criteria for assessing and teaching robotic surgical skills to improve the safety and outcomes of patients undergoing minimally invasive surgery everywhere.” 

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