{"slug": "im-still-me-east-bay-patient-undergoes-newly-cleared-robotic-mastectomy", "title": "‘I’m still me’: East Bay patient undergoes newly cleared robotic mastectomy", "summary": "Vicky Pan, a 46-year-old Moraga pharmacist and mother, became the first patient at a U.S. community hospital outside a clinical trial to undergo a newly cleared robotic double mastectomy at Sutter's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland in March 2025. The single-port robotic nipple-sparing mastectomy, performed by surgeon Dr. Rita Kwan-Feinberg, was cleared by the FDA in December 2024 and aims to preserve the nipple, breast skin, and potentially more sensation than traditional mastectomy. Pan, who was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer after finding a lump in July 2025, said after the procedure, 'I'm still me.'", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...When Vicky Pan woke from a double mastectomy at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland in March, she was relieved by a realization: “I’m still me.”\n\nkThe 46-year-old Moraga pharmacist and mother had endured a punishing nine months. Until July 2025, she had been enjoying “peak happiness,” as she put it: a busy career, a loving marriage, two young sons and a light-filled home overlooking the surrounding hills.\n\nThen she found a lump in her right breast, several months after a clear mammogram, and was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive, fast-moving form of the disease. A grueling six months of chemotherapy took her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes and left her so sick and drained of energy that she couldn’t work, care for her sons or even “care for myself.”\n\n“It’s almost designed to strip you of your identity,” Pan said of the disease.\n\nPan underwent a newly cleared robotic procedure intended to minimize some of the physical losses she had feared. Alta Bates Summit says she became the first patient to receive it at a community hospital in the United States outside a clinical trial.\n\nThe “single-port robotic nipple-sparing mastectomy,” performed by Alta Bates Summit surgeon Dr. Rita Kwan-Feinberg, preserves the nipple and breast skin for reconstruction and may retain more sensation than a traditional mastectomy.\n\nThe Food and Drug Administration in December cleared the da Vinci single-port surgical system for use in nipple-sparing mastectomies. The technique offers a potentially less-invasive option for a small group of mastectomy patients whose eligibility depends on the type and location of their cancer, the size and shape of their breasts and other factors.\n\nLaura Dominici, a breast cancer surgeon at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, hesitated to call the surgery “groundbreaking” because the available data has been limited to “a small group of select patients with select surgeons.” But she said the procedure follows a broader trend toward less-invasive mastectomies.\n\n“I think probably the most compelling thing that people seem to be talking about is whether it may actually preserve more sensation for a patient, because usually after mastectomy, the skin and the nipples are pretty numb,” she said.\n\nIn granting clearance, the FDA reviewed a randomized trial involving 53 patients that found no difference in short-term safety between the robotic and traditional procedures. None of the 26 patients who underwent robotic surgery had to be converted to an open procedure, and surgeons achieved clear margins in each case. The FDA document did not draw conclusions about long-term cancer outcomes or preserved sensation.\n\n“Single port” means the operation is conducted through a single incision beneath the armpit. During Pan’s operation, Kwan-Feinberg sat at a console and used hand and foot controls to guide the robot’s small 3D camera and surgical instruments through an inclusion beneath each arm.\n\nKwan-Feinberg said the camera gives her a detailed view of the blood vessels, nerves and “that perfect plane between the breast tissue and the underside of the skin,” potentially allowing her to remove the cancer and breast tissue with greater precision.\n\n“Because there’s a lot less tissue trauma, there is a lot less pain, there’s faster healing and the cosmetic outcome is great,” she said.\n\nA traditional nipple-sparing mastectomy can involve incisions of up to 8 inches, usually near where a bra’s underwire would sit, with tissue and skin being stretched and nerves potentially severed, said Deborah Farr, a University of Texas Southwestern surgeon helped bring the robotic procedure to the United States.\n\nFarr led a [four-year study that began in 2020 and](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2813933) involved 20 women. The case series, published in JAMA Surgery in 2024, found that the single-port procedure was safe and feasible among those patients. Among the patients tested for sensation, researchers reported that 95% of breast-skin sensation and 55% of nipple sensation was preserved after surgery.\n\n“Even if the reconstructed breasts looked fantastic, patients would often feel as if their breasts were numb and detached, similar to how your legs feel after getting an epidural,” Farr [wrote in a 2025 article about the procedure](https://utswmed.org/medblog/robotic-mastectomy-breast-cancer/).\n\nWhen doctors advised Pan to have a mastectomy, she chose to have both breasts removed to reduce the likelihood that she would face breast cancer again. She initially imagined major scarring and the loss of body parts that were integral to her “identity as a woman.”\n\n“Maybe it’s vanity, but it’s very traumatic, right?” she said. “It’s not just losing the breast, but it’s that after the surgery, you look in the mirror, and you’ve already lost everything else.”\n\nFour months after surgery, Pan sat in the library of her Moraga home, surrounded by books and her sons’ Lego sculptures. Christian and Emmett, now 9 and 11, were home for summer break while her beloved white-and-tan corgis tussled nearby.\n\nHer husband, Justin Leong, recalled how Christian cried upon learning “mom was sick with cancer,” while Emmett had trouble expressing his feelings. Leong said he was scared by the possibility of losing his wife and admired the bravery and toughness she had been during the past year.\n\nPan expressed gratitude that the procedure became available in the East Bay just as she needed it. Her insurer fully covered the operation.\n\nPan spent one night in the hospital, barely needed pain medication and was left with two paper-clip-length incisions hidden on either side of her chest. Three weeks later, she traveled with Leong and their sons to Monterey, where they walked on the beach and around the aquarium.\n\n“I hope more women have this option,” she said.\n\nPan is finishing several more rounds of immunotherapy and chemotherapy and hopes to return to her job as a medical information pharmacist early next year. She has temporary expanders in her breasts, placed by plastic surgeon David S. Chang immediately after Kwan-Feinberg completed the mastectomy. Her breast reconstruction scheduled for December.\n\nPan said the sensation remaining in her chest “makes a huge difference.”\n\n“I mean it’s not 100%, but you know I can still feel my breasts,” she said. “I can still feel when I have a shirt on.”\n\nKwan-Feinberg followed Farr’s work in Texas and wanted to bring the surgery to Alta Bates Summit after the FDA cleared the da Vinci SP system for nipple-sparing mastectomies. Philanthropist Peter Read donated the $2 million needed to purchase the robotic platform, which was named “Carol” in honor of his wife who died of breast cancer.\n\nRobotic-assisted surgery has gained widespread acceptance in the United States, mostly through the “multi-port” technique, which uses multiple robotic arms and incisions. T[he Cleveland Clinic first used the single-port platform in the United States in 2018](https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/novel-single-port-robotic-urology-surgery-surpasses-1000-cases) for urology surgery.\n\nKwan-Feinberg and Farr said the platform’s smaller design makes it better suited to “small, delicate” areas such as the breast. Surgeons in Europe and South Korea pioneered its use in breast surgery before Farr and her colleagues began the U.S. clinical trial in 2020.\n\nIn the dozen surgeries performed at Alta Bates Summit, Chang said the smaller incisions have caused “less trauma overall.”\n\n“There’s less disruption of blood supply, and then, as well, less injury from having to retract on the skin,” he said.\n\nKwan-Feinberg said the procedure is not suitable for most women with breast cancer. Most undergo breast-conserving surgeries known as a lumpectomy, while fewer than 30% undergo mastectomies. A still-smaller percentage qualify for nipple-sparing surgery, whether robotic or traditional, she said.\n\nEligibility depends on the size and shape of the natural breast, the location of the nipple-areola complex and the cancer’s proximity to the nipple. Kwan-Feinberg also considered Pan a good candidate because she was otherwise in good health.\n\nPan had no known elevated risk factors or family history of breast cancer, which Kwan-Feinberg said was not unusual.\n\n“The most common scenario is actually a woman with no family history of breast cancer,” she said.\n\nWhile Pan speaks of her surgery as “a miracle,” she remains realistic about the possibility that her triple-negative cancer could return. She will be closely monitored for the next five years, when recurrence is most likely,[ according to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.](https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/triple-negative-breast-cancer/)\n\nThe uncertainty has changed how she thinks about the time ahead.\n\n“If I have five years left, how do I want to spend my time? Every day is precious,” she said.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/im-still-me-east-bay-patient-undergoes-newly-cleared-robotic-mastectomy", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/30/east-bay-robotic-mastectomy-breast-cancer/", "published_at": "2026-07-30 13:00:33+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-30 13:06:31.577580+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["robotics", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Vicky Pan", "Sutter's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center", "Dr. Rita Kwan-Feinberg", "Food and Drug Administration", "da Vinci single-port surgical system", "Laura Dominici", "Dana-Farber Cancer Institute", "Deborah Farr"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/im-still-me-east-bay-patient-undergoes-newly-cleared-robotic-mastectomy", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/im-still-me-east-bay-patient-undergoes-newly-cleared-robotic-mastectomy.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/im-still-me-east-bay-patient-undergoes-newly-cleared-robotic-mastectomy.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/im-still-me-east-bay-patient-undergoes-newly-cleared-robotic-mastectomy.jsonld"}}