CHICAGO -- There's a new way to perform stomach surgery for obesity.

Robotic surgery has been used for organ transplants, prostate cancer, and heart disease, and now there's a new way to perform stomach surgery for obesity.

A doctor in Chicago is using robotics to help morbidly obese patients in a procedure referred to as lap-band surgery.

"I was a big pizza addict and loved pizza, or maybe even going out for a very big steak. I could do some very serious damage to it," said patient Audrey Brodie (pictured, right).

But that was in her previous life, when normal diets failed and she weighed more than 300 pounds (pictured, left).

Now, her lunch is just a bowl of soup, and she'll only eat half of that. It's the same when she eats out.

"A typical meal for me may be half a chicken breast," Brodie said. "The wait staff will come over and say, 'Is everything OK? Is something wrong with the food?'"

In 13 months, Brodie's lost 120 pounds. Her dress size went from 26 to 16.

She had lap-band surgery, in which an inflatable belt is cinched up around the top of the stomach. Only a little food can fill the top pouch, making the patient feel full. Then, like sand in an hourglass, the food passes slowly into the rest of the stomach.

The belt can be tightened or loosened with a solution that's injected into a port at the surface of the skin.

"Once you reach your weight-loss goal, you can deflate the band and see how you're doing. But never remove it," said Dr. Santiago Horgan, the surgeon who performed Brodie's surgery.

Horgan performed the operation at the University of Illinois-Chicago Hospital with a minimally invasive surgery. But now, for some patients, he's doing the same thing with a robot.

Horgan sits at a console, performing the operation by remote control. His hands and fingers are busy moving giant robot arms over the patient. And inside the body, tiny robot hands can twist and turn far better than the standard instruments.

Another advantage of the robotic approach is that the robot camera inside the body has two eyes, so the doctor's view is three-dimensional. He said the robot is especially good for his largest patients.

"With more lymph nodes, a big liver, more weight, you can handle everything much better" with the robotic arms, he said.

Some patients go home the same day, and the operation itself takes less than half an hour.

Studies indicate that lap-band surgery may not cause as much weight loss as the older bypass stomach surgery, but it is less risky.

Additional Resource:

• Lap-band safety information from the Food and Drug Administration