The Regional Medical Center surgeon Dr. Jason Cundiff talks about his specialty in robotics surgery and his desire to make the RMC a Center of Excellence for robotics-based surgery in the state. He sees the RMC as leading the way in the state in emergency general surgery with a focus on acute care robotics.
Dr. Jason Cundiff stands alone among doctors in robotics general surgery.
Described as a pioneer in the field, he has performed more than 3,000 robotic surgical procedures and has presented and lectured nationally in 30 states on the topic.
His experience in robotics procedures is matched by few others nationally and now Orangeburg’s Regional Medical Center can claim him as one of their own.
Cundiff has been hired by RMC to help lead its surgical robotics team with the intention of building a robotic surgery-based center of excellence to provide the best possible care for the patients. He joined the hospital in November.
“There is no discernable reason why they (patients) shouldn’t have the same level of advanced surgical care available to them in their hometown that they have in larger metropolitan areas,” Cundiff said. “They are not only going to get equal but in some cases they are going to get an advanced form beyond what is happening in Greenville, Columbia or Charleston.”
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General surgery is currently undergoing a robotic surgery revolution, Cundiff said. He sees RMC leading the way in the state in emergency general surgery with a focus on acute care robotics.
“The capability to perform minimally invasive surgery with better outcomes on significantly more patients has never been greater for surgeons utilizing the da Vinci robotic system,” Cundiff said. “It has quickly become the standard of care in colorectal procedures, both ventral and inguinal hernia repair and complex abdominal procedures.”
“Most recently, acute care surgery has become the latest field revolutionized by exclusive use of robotics in that patient population,” Cundiff said.
As part of the RMC staff, Cundiff will be tasked with continuing to develop and implement all the hospital’s robotic programs.
Cundiff said the surgeons at the RMC Center for Robotic Surgery currently have experience in all facets of robotic abdominal surgery, including foregut, abdominal and inguinal hernia, colorectal and complex abdominal surgery involving the pancreas and biliary system.
“I believe that exclusive use of the robotic system in our practice allows for a much higher standard and expectation of improved outcomes in our patient population,” he said.
The benefits are smaller incisions, less pain, quicker recovery times and shorter hospital stays.
“To me, what is even more important, these cases have lower rates of incisional infection, lower rates of hernias coming from the incisions and lower rates of hernias redeveloping when the operation is a hernia repair,” he said.
RMC currently also provides robotic-assisted orthopedic surgery, gynecologic surgery and other specific surgical procedures, including gallbladder, reflux and ventral hernia repair.
“South Carolina is a couple years behind the national curve of incorporating robotics into that field. Even in Columbia and Charleston, they are not doing the degree of minimally invasive surgery that we are doing now that I bring with my practice,” Cundiff said. “I have actually trained and proctored robotics to emergency surgeons at USC and MUSC in the past.
“They are building that capability, but we have that capacity, which is very surprising.”
RMC says Cundiff is the most experienced robotic surgeon in the state and more experienced than 99.9 percent of robotic surgeons nationally.
He is also touted as the most experienced robotic acute care surgeon in the entire country.
When he is not doing surgery, Cundiff is a national lecturer, instructor and training proctor.
Cundiff received his medical training from the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and then his residency from Louisiana State University – New Orleans in general surgery.
He received his fellowship training at the University of Washington Liver Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery. Cundiff is certified by the American Board of Surgery.
Cundiff comes to RMC
Cundiff said he was introduced to the RMC in April 2022 when he was doing a presentation in Columbia on robotics surgery. The presentation was attended by Orangeburg surgeon Dr. Mauricio Bassante and RMC Chief Operating Officer Sabrina Robinson.
“I had been wanting to change my practice venue,” Cundiff said. “I was doing mostly robotic emergency surgery, which was great and it is one of my big specialties, but I had started to miss some of the elective procedures and I wanted to have maybe more of a balanced practice.”
Bassante and Robinson told him about the opportunity at RMC.
“It really seemed like a wonderful opportunity because it is a very underserved area and I really liked the idea of coming to an underserved area where we could build something and on top of that we could also have a place to kind of build something from new,” Cundiff said.
In addition to serving RMC, Cundiff also serves part time at the Dorn Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Columbia.
“It was a great combination of being able to serve two underserved populations in my new practice,” Cundiff said.
Cundiff said when he heard about RMC, he also heard about the hospital’s plans to partner with the Medical University of South Carolina.
“I thought it was a fantastic addition, because to be able to collaborate with MUSC from an academic standpoint and be able to have a referral arrangement for the really complex cases and to have that seamless care available, I thought was a fantastic development,” Cundiff said. “Anytime you have a university that is willing to come in and provide guidance and academic collaboration, it only helps the center, especially if there is motivation within the center to elevate the level of care.”
Plans to develop
a center of excellence
As part of his plans at the RMC, Cundiff is looking to develop a “center of excellence” in robotic surgery where patients can receive all their surgical needs.
“We have the capability to take care of these complex cases and emergency cases which are complex in a way we have not had previously,” Cundiff said. “I think it is a game-changer.”
Developing a center of excellence practically means that every patient that comes into RMC will be evaluated based upon robotics intervention, he said. The center will track all data and outcomes to ensure decisions are scientifically guided.
“It also means being a teaching institution,” he said, noting doctors will come to RMC to learn robotic surgery techniques.
He said another part of the center will focus on reducing post-operative narcotics, which is a part of minimally invasive surgical techniques.
Finally, the center would be a leader in robotics surgical advancements.
“It is keeping up to speed with the advancement,” Cundiff said. “This is an evolving field. … It is our duty to keep up to speed with what is coming and be on the cutting edge.”
Cundiff hopes to have the center completely certified and officially recognized by the Surgical Review Corporation within the next six months, but in the meantime the RMC will be a center of excellence “by substance.”
Cundiff has further big plans for RMC.
He eventually – within a year – foresees having a fully functioning thoracic oncology program that would include thoracic robotic surgery and lung cancer screening programs.
He said the program would do biopsies with intuitive ion bronchoscopy.
“It will take a little bit of time to get there, but we have privileges to do that sort of surgery but that is kind of the last phase of it,” he said.
Cundiff is joined with Bassante, Dr. Thomas Chow and Dr. Michael Hill in providing robotics surgery at RMC.
“I think we have everything we need. As the volume goes up, we are eventually going to need a second system,” Cundiff said. “There are benchmarks established for that, but we really have the space.”
Medical mission trips
Beyond his work at RMC, Cundiff is planning to build on a nonprofit organization he started in the state of Washington in 2010 following the earthquake in Haiti. Cundiff and his team went to the country and did surgeries for three straight weeks.
Since that time, he has taken two to three trips annually and has visited countries such as South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru.
The new nonprofit will be named Palmetto Surgical Outreach and will be based in Orangeburg.
Cundiff is planning a five-day trip to Honduras in April.
He says the plans are to do 40 surgeries during the trip at a public hospital in Honduras. Though the surgeries will not be done robotically, Cundiff said the residents of the country will receive the same quality of care as is received in the United States.
He or his team plans to go to the country every four months.
“We are going to start the whole process of incorporating people from this community into these mission trips,” he said. “It really breaths a communal sense when you have operating folks, nurses from the floor and surgeons from the hospital. You really get a closer bond.”
Cundiff also plans to reach out to South Carolina State University and provide an internship with their premedical students that would provide them with an opportunity to go on the medical mission.
For Cundiff, there is nothing more satisfying than helping to improve the quality of life for those who are not able to receive health care, including children.
“It is truly life changing,” Cundiff said.
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