Robert Langreth, writing for Bloomberg, compared a surgeon performing robot surgery to someone who is playing a video game.
“A doctor sits at a video-game style console several feet from the patient and peers into a high- definition display,” wrote Langreth. “Foot pedals and hand controls maneuver mechanical arms equipped with surgical tools, guided by a 3-D camera that shows the work as it is done inside a patient.”
Thinking of robot surgery as a video game brings up childhood fears of accidentally dropping Mario over a cliff or watching Ms. Pac-Man meet a ghost. Fortunately, in these games, the characters have extra lives. Human patients aren’t so lucky.
Massachusetts is considering changing the way doctors receive credentials for performing robotic surgery. The state is also demanding that surgeons warn patients of the risks associated with robot surgery.
Credentials, for example, are currently awarded based on physicians performing robot surgery on a certain number of patients. Instead, argues the Massachusetts state board, credentials should be based on proficiency.
The board has also called for increased disclosure to patients about a surgeon’s experience with certain procedures and the risks that are involved. According to a 2011 study in the Journal of Healthcare Quality, hospitals sometimes exaggerate the benefits of robot surgery in their marketing.
For example, instead of using real patient photography on their websites, hospitals use stock photographs provided by robot manufacturers. Some even claim that robot surgery has superior outcomes to traditional surgery, even though that isn’t always the case.
At least 70 deaths related to robot surgery have occurred in the U.S. since 2009. The Massachusetts board described three different reports of complications it received.
For example, a woman undergoing a hysterectomy with ovary removal experienced damage to her bowel and urinary tract, which required corrective surgeries. Another surgeon left a piece of rectal tissue in a patient’s abdomen after performing surgery for ulcerative colitis.
Bloomberg also reported that over 10 lawsuits were filed against robot manufacturers in the past 14 months. Most of the lawsuits criticize the manufacturer’s training regimen for surgeons.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
