For the first time at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, surgeons have performed a robotic kidney transplant — a minimally invasive procedure designed to ease recovery with smaller incisions, less pain and reduced risk of wound complications.

That innovation came at a critical moment for 74-year-old Joe Harris. His daughter-in-law, Brooke, made the extraordinary decision to donate her kidney, and together with this new surgical approach, it gave Joe not just better health, but a renewed future.

Watch: Robotic kidney transplant, when innovation meets family

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video (3:04) is in the downloads at the end of this post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network." Read the script.

"You're a match."

The words Brooke Harris was waiting for. Now, to share the news with her father-in-law.

Joe Harris had been on a kidney transplant waiting list since 2016. Worried about his age and ability to care for his wife, he was eager to find a match.

"I just was afraid that things were going to run out and I would get to a point that I could only be on dialysis, and then I wouldn't be, wouldn't be able to take care of her," says Joe.

Multiple setbacks in finding a kidney donor deeply affected Brooke.

"As soon as we found out and they told us that that second person didn't work, it was just this deep knowing in me that I need to test and find out. I didn't know why," she says.

And that test was a match. Dr. Michelle Nguyen, a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon, explains how direct donation works.

"If you have a friend or a loved one who wants to donate a kidney to you, and you match them by blood type and by tissue typing, you can donate your kidney directly to your friend or your loved one," says Dr. Nguyen.

Not only would Joe get the organ he had been hoping for, but he'd also be the first patient at Mayo Clinic in Arizona to undergo robotic kidney transplantation.

"I went, 'Good, let's do it.' I had no hesitancy about the robotic thing. The more I learned about it, the more I thought this is going to be kind of cool," Joe says.

"In patients who meet criteria to receive robotic kidney transplant, the goal is that it will provide improved outcomes for the patient — so smaller incisions, less pain, faster recovery, faster return to work or faster return to their day-to-day life," says Dr. Nguyen.

Robotic kidney surgery doesn't replace the surgeon. Instead, it gives surgeons advanced tools to operate, as Dr. Nitin Katariya, a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon, explains.

"It is a console that has four arms that can be placed near the bed and then a separate sort of console where you sit apart from the patient, where you can control the arms. And these arms articulate in ways you can control the camera, and you have multiple different instruments that you can switch out to navigate the anatomy and perform your operation," he says.

Dr. Nguyen adds, "One important thing to note about robotic surgery, using this platform, is that at no point in time is the robot making any movements without the surgeons maneuvering the instruments."

For Brooke, she says the experience was easier than she thought.

"Honestly, even going back to the surgery, I have to say it's definitely not as scary as it seems. And recovery was a lot easier than I had anticipated," says Brooke.

And for Joe, his gratitude for his daughter-in-law's selfless donation is hard to put into words.

"How do you thank somebody for that? I don't know. It's so humbling. That's been hard for me, in a way, but I'm grateful. And she knows how I care about her," says Joe.

Related posts:

• Mayo Clinic Minute: What to expect as a living kidney donor
• A living legacy: Donors who give hope and healing

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