For the first time in his 15-year career, a cancer surgeon successfully treated a 65-year-old woman patient on the brink of cervical cancer—just six months from a diagnosis—thanks to her daughter’s insistence on a routine check-up.

The woman underwent a robotic-assisted hysterectomy at Jaslok hospital last month and has since been stable. “She was in the pre-cancer stage (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3) and had no symptoms. Had she waited a few more months, she would likely have had postmenopausal bleeding and other signs of cervical cancer,” said Dr Vishnu Agarwal, the robotic cancer surgeon who treated her.