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Members of the colorectal team have been celebrating to mark a major landmark within the department.

Monday (January 29) marked 25 surgical complex procedures carried out on patients by consultant colorectal surgeons Alistair Slesser and Alistair Myers using the Da Vinci robot.

A small event was held with balloons and cakes for staff to mark the occasion.

Mr Myers said: "We've talked about how this is a team sport, that unlike everything else we do this is way too much machine for one person to handle so you have to have team members.

"So thank you to everyone from Donna, our robotic sister, to the anaesthetists, to the visionary management team to Jamie, our robotic assistant, and many more. We've had 25 cases now and it is a continuing journey."

Fellow consultant surgeon Yasser Mohsen, who has worked at Hillingdon for more than two decades, explained on our podcast this week how the department has evolved over the years, culminating in the recent purchase of the robot.

"We have achieved a significant progress in our surgical department at Hillingdon," he said. "When I started it was two of us doing bowel cancer work; now there is five of us.

"We've also appointed new emergency surgical consultants and we've also managed to purchase a surgical robot.

"So we now move into the most advanced stage of bowel cancer surgery, which is using the Da Vinci robot, which is a remote operating set up and that allows a lot of meticulous, accurate performance surgical surgery.

"It's a step forward from keyhole surgery to very meticulous reproducible quality type surgery. It is just over the last few months that we've started doing this and that is very exciting.

"It shows that we're always looking to progress and we will not rest just because we've achieved anything and not go forwards even further."