Q&A With Dr. David Samadi, Chief of Robotic Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital

Dr. David B. Samadi is known for his compelling life story and his successful career on the cutting edge of robot-assisted surgery. As a teenager, he left his home country during the Iranian Revolution. Then, he lived in Belgium without his parents and studied at the Stony Brook School of Medicine in New York.

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Today, as a urologic oncologist, Dr. Samadi has developed an innovative robotic surgery that’s helped more than 7,000 prostate cancer patients. He’s also pioneering minimally invasive robotic surgeries for treating kidney and bladder cancer. In a recent interview, Dr. Samadi explained how he has time to help patients in one of the nation’s most advanced cancer centers while developing new surgical procedures and appearing on Fox News as a health expert.

Dr. Samadi’s day begins at 4:30 a.m. While most people are just waking up, he enjoys an hour and a half of productivity. Three days a week, he travels to New York City’s Lenox Hill Hospital where he performs minimally invasive robotic surgeries for patients who have been diagnosed with prostate, kidney or bladder cancer.

The Samadi Modified Advanced Robotic Treatment (SMART) is less invasive compared to the most advanced laparoscopic methods, including French procedures that inspired his breakthrough. The SMART method is effective and has fewer complications and risks. Ninety percent of Dr. Samadi’s patients are cancer free after one year.

Although many prostate cancer patients seek out Dr. Samadi because of his cutting-edge cancer treatment, he relies on word-of-mouth referrals. He earns praise by treating his staff members and patients like family. Dr. Samadi’s passion for helping people encouraged him to become a doctor. That’s why he believes in being accessible at all times before and after surgery. Like many leading experts in medicine and technology, Dr. Samadi is determined and results driven.

As the robotic surgery department at Lenox Hill Hospital expanded, he remained focused on improving results and maintaining the highest quality standards while treating more patients. According to Samadi, efficiency is the key. He often refers to his anesthesiologists and nurses as a baseball team or aircraft crew because each person has a specific job to perform.

One day, he was inspired by an interview with the founder of JetBlue, who mentioned the importance of effective ground crews who would prepare the planes between flights so that the pilots wouldn’t have downtime. Samadi said that he immediately changed his strategy in the operating room. Now, his nurses and assistants start cleaning the room approximately 30 minutes before the end of the surgery. That way, the operating room is ready for the next patient, and Dr. Samadi can walk into the next room to complete another treatment without delay.

Dr. Samadi says that his secret for improving efficiency is sticking to a routine. He follows a strict daily schedule. By doing the same things again and again, he says that it becomes a natural routine where one task flows into next.

Although Samadi is a relentless worker, he loves to relax with his family and play backgammon and tennis. He says that exercising helps him unwind so that he’s more productive in the long run. With such a busy schedule, it’s difficult to avoid stress, but Samadi recognizes the importance of relaxing to recharge his batteries so that he can avoid burnout and maintain a high level of productivity throughout the week.

There’s rarely a time when Samadi isn’t working. When inspiration strikes, he’ll jot down a little note or diagram. Even at 3 a.m., he will get up to document a new idea. Since he has a strong photographic memory, Samadi says that illustrations help him remember concepts when he looks through his notes months or years in the future. When an idea is ripe for development, Samadi creates a plan for exploring and implementing it with a team of collaborators.

This process of creating a workable concept isn’t always easy. Before creating the SMART method, Samadi traveled to France to work with pioneering surgeons who were using a novel laparoscopic technique to remove prostate cancer. His next breakthrough was using the da Vinci robotic interface to perform similar minimally invasive surgeries that reduce the risk of severe complications, including impotence and incontinence.

Samadi credits some of his success with being in the right place at the right time. He was among the first doctors in the world to perform robotic prostate surgery, which has many advantages when compared to the conventional surgeries that he originally performed. He was the first surgeon to specialize in robotic prostate surgeries in the United States.

Since robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostate surgery has become so popular, Dr. Samadi is committed to training more surgeons to use the SMART method. He’s also developing other urologic surgeries that benefit from the precision and accuracy of the robotic interface.