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HERALD Your Health
Diabetes & Weight Management
Inside Vol. 22 No. 51
Salisbury lights the tree
Flag football championships
Page 3
Page 10
DECEMBER 15 - 21, 2022
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An E.M. ‘Grinch’ lights up Christmas By MAlloRY WIlSoN mwilson@liherald.com
Tim Baker/Herald
MARIo FRoEHlICH HAS been syncing the lights outside his house to music for six years. There are more than 20,000 pixels outside his house, in shapes that he either bought or created on a 3D printer.
Mario Froehlich doesn’t describe himself as a warm and fuzzy man, but if you drive past his house during Halloween — or at Christmas — you’d be surprised to hear that. His 1439 Sherwood Dr. home is decked out with tens of thousands of pixels, all synced to music that plays for hours every night until New Year’s Eve. “January first,” Froehlich, 54, joked, “I turn back into the Grinch.” His house has always been decorated. He and his wife, Linda, always lived in East Meadow and now live in Mario’s Continued on page 2
Excelling at robotic surgeries, with help from the da Vinci By MAlloRY WIlSoN mwilson@liherald.com
Imagine a doctor telling you that you need your gallbladder removed. Then imagine the doctor telling you that the procedure would be done using a robot. At first, you would have a lot of questions, but then you would find out that it’s actually one of the safest, least invasive ways to do surgery. Nassau University Medical Center got its first robot in 2020, and after two years of extensive training and teamwork, the hospital has met the Surgical Review Corporation’s accreditation requirements to become a Center
of Excellence in robotic surgery. The requirements included performing over 200 surgeries, training and certifying surgeons and registered nurses, and passing an on-site inspection of both the facility and staff. SRC’s Center of Excellence accreditation program ensures the safest, highest quality of care is delivered to patients receiving robot-assisted surgeries worldwide, regardless of where they choose to have their procedure performed. NUMC staffs seven surgeons credentialed to operate the da Vinci Xi robot and a team of trained operating room nursing staff to assist. The hospital also implemented a train-the-
trainer method to continue to grow the program. Even though NUMC was one of the last hospitals to get a robot, due to its price, it was one of the fastest hospitals to get SRC’s approval. “When Covid happened, I said, ‘you know what, to make it safer for surgeons, let me see if I can get a robot,’” Dr. Anthony Boutin, president, CEO and chief medical officer of NUMC, said. “We were doing dental and ophthalmology, making sure they were safe, and I knew the robot would be non-invasive, and it ultimately became a safety thing.” Since its first case in October
2020, NUMC’s robotics staff has successfully performed 361 robotassisted surgeries with no complications. The da Vinci robot comes with a price of upward of a million dollars. But, the benefits could easily outweigh the cost. Robotassisted surgeries cause less pain and blood loss, minimal scarring, a reduced risk of infection, and
shorter hospital stays. Patients are almost always discharged within four hours after the operation. There were three main factors that helped the hospital get the robot, according to Dr. Venkatesh Sasthakonar, the head of the robotics program and director of bariatric surgery. The motivation Continued on page 19