New General Surgeon at Mason City Clinic Sees Great Benefits For Local Residents Choosing Surgery Close to Home

March 28, 2023

Caitlin Lund, DO, a general surgeon who speaks to benefits of robotic surgery for patients at the Mason City Clinic.

Click below to watch and listen to Dr. Lund talk about how she became interested in her specialty of general surgery and the benefits of robotic surgery to patients —  minimally invasive, more precise, and thorough surgery, with less downtime.

Transcript

Caitlin Lund DO:

I attended medical school at the Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences. Since then, I pursued training and residency in general surgery in Des Moines, Iowa. It wasn’t until I was doing my surgery rotation in medical school where I learned that my affinity with my hands in crafting, like sewing and knitting, actually translated directly into the operating room, and that was an instant match for me.

I love being a general surgeon because I get to experience a breadth of different cases. The variety keeps it both interesting and challenging. I also love the connection that I make with my patients. Being able to help people during a difficult time in their lives is very rewarding, and I take that very seriously.

I think the most important thing that I bring to the care of my patients, and as well as the rest of my team, is that we address the patient as a whole person, not just a disease or a condition. And we try to approach each patient with empathy, and compassion, and respect. I think that, at the end of the day, that’s what is going to give us the best outcomes for each patient’s individual treatment plan.

So, I specialize in general surgery. That means that I can take care of a vast array of different disease conditions. I specialize in breast, intestine, hernia, gallbladder, endoscopy, just to name a few. I specifically really am passionate about minimally invasive surgery, including laparoscopy and robotic surgery. Robotic surgery expounds on our existing technology of laparoscopic surgery, so it’s minimally-invasive in that the patient has fewer incisions and can recover faster.

What adds to it is that we have wristed* instruments that are specialized and allow us to perform basically the same surgery we would do in an open operation using our hands, but with this added benefit of these small, very precise instruments with smaller incisions. So patients recover faster and have much less pain, as well as the surgeon feels that they’re able to perform a much more thorough surgery.

I think that we are able to provide a level of care that’s on par with other larger healthcare institutions, but because of our size of our community, we don’t have the associated wait times that a larger hospital institution might have. So we’re able to provide the same level of care, with the same cutting-edge technologies, without the wait times and problems that come with a larger health institution. People entrust you at a very difficult time in their lives when they come to you for, say, at a cancer diagnosis. And I take that responsibility very seriously, and the relationship that I’m able to create with patients during a difficult time in their lives is a really special one.

* Wristed instruments are surgical instruments that allow for fully articulating, wristed motion during laparoscopic surgery, giving the surgeon the same freedom and control they have by using their hands in open surgery with great precision and much smaller incisions.