2010 12 People You Need to Know: Dr. David Anderson

Dr. David Anderson is not one to shy away from matters that make others blush.

"I love helping people with problems they don't want to talk about," says Anderson, a urologist and robotic surgeon at Ferrell-Duncan Clinic, a CoxHealth affiliate. "It's not always the most comfortable thing for a patient to talk about erectile dysfunction or incontinence."

Anderson sees up to 35 patients a day twice a week and on other days performs surgeries. Enabling a healthy and happy life balance is part of what drove Anderson to study urology.

"I don't think anyone plans to be a urologist when they enter medical school," he says. "I wanted to have a decent life and not work 150 hours per week."

Anderson grew up in northwest Iowa and completed his undergraduate training at Taylor University, a small liberal arts school in Indiana. He then returned to Iowa, where he completed both medical school and residency training at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. In 2005, he came to Springfield and joined Ferrell-Duncan Clinic.  

In Iowa, Anderson trained under Dr. Howard Winfield, a leader in the world of laparoscopic urology, and received firsthand experience on the da Vinci Robotic Surgery system. When he saw how much easier the recovery time was for patients, Anderson says he pushed to get the robotic equipment at CoxHealth. 

He and partner Dr. Howard Follis were the first to perform a prostatectomy, nephrectomy, cystectomy, and pyeloplasty with robotic equipment in southwest Missouri at the clinic's Center for Robotic Surgery.

"Within the scope of urology, I get to take care of patients on a long-term basis, where more surgeons get to see them three times: pre-op, surgery and post-op," Anderson says.

The $1.6 million da Vinci machine allows the surgeon to sit at a console and manipulate robotic arms that perform prostate and kidney surgeries, and hysterectomies. A monitor provides the surgeon with a 3-D image of the surgical field, while traditional laparoscopy offers a two-dimensional view. The surgeon's fingers grasp the master controls below the display, with hands and wrists naturally positioned relative to his or her eyes. The system seamlessly translates the surgeon's hand, wrist and finger movements into precise, real-time movements of the surgical instruments.

"The technology and the precision it offers is key in a delicate surgery such as a prostatectomy," Anderson says. "The magnification and resolution are so much improved, I can see things I've never seen before in an operation I've done a hundred times."

Today, both Cox South and St. John's hospitals in Springfield have the robotic systems.

"It's not the most glamorous of all specialties, but it allowed me to use my skill set," Anderson says of urology.