Patients Requesting More Robotic Surgeries, But Just Because It’s Cool

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 15 of February , 2010 at 1:01 am

Here’s some good news for the medical robotics industry: while in 2001 only 5,000 men had robot assisted prostate cancer surgery, in 2009 that number was up to 73,000 people- or about 86% of the total number of surgeries. Why the jump? People are actually requesting surgery via robot now. Or maybe I should say demanding:

But now, patient after patient was walking away. They did not want [conventional] surgery. They wanted surgery by a robot, controlled by a physician not necessarily even in the operating room, face buried in a console, working the robot’s arms with remote controls.

“Patients interview you,” said Dr. Cadeddu, a urologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “They say: ‘Do you use the robot? O.K., well, thank you.’ ” And they leave.

The strange thing about this sudden interest in robots is that there’s no real evidence that the robots do a better job than the humans do. There’s one Medicare study that suggests that the robot surgeries turn out slightly better in some ways and slightly worse in others, as well as some amazing anecdotes. As you might expect, the surgery itself comes with trade-offs… While the robots can reach into much smaller spaces using smaller incisions, the doctors don’t get the same degree of tactile feedback, and the surgery can take up to twice as long. Also, patients pay a substantial premium for robot assisted surgery- anywhere from $1500 to $2000 extra.

So what’s the deal? One thing to consider is that the robots themselves (da Vinci surgical robots from Intuitive Systems) cost $1.39 million a pop (plus $140k a year for service), and the hospitals need to pay them off somehow, which gives them an incentive to advertise the robotic option. But without any convincing statistics, it seems like “it’s a robot” has to be the primary argument, and it appears to be working.

It’s interesting that people show so much faith in robots operating on them, and often such dubious faith in robots elsewhere. Or maybe when I say “faith” I really mean “trust.” And even that is a funny thing to consider, because the da Vinci system is teleoperated, just like Predator drones. The real question is going to come up when both medical and military robots (and I guess you can throw consumer robots into the mix too) start incorporating some degree of autonomy and decision making more sophisticated than a Roomba. It’s a tricky thing, though, especially when it comes to surgical robots, and military robots as well, since the stakes are so high. And I think that surgical robots illustrate the point even more vividly than military robots do: would you be more or less comfortable having a robot operate on you without a human in the loop?

[ NYT ] VIA [ Robots.net ]

Comments (9)

Category: Medical

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9 Comments

Made Monday, 15 of February , 2010 at 2:10 am

Or since it’s about prostate operations, maybe because they don’t like the idea of a man putting his hand up their bottom.

Comment by wow

Made Monday, 15 of February , 2010 at 6:36 pm

High technology. Shudder ..

Comment by Joey1058

Made Tuesday, 16 of February , 2010 at 10:54 am

Well, considering I’m in the magical age group that will possibly need prostate surgery, I need to chime in on this. I think the Baby Boomer generation is going to be the last group that will really be skeptical about machine intelligence without somebody at the controls “just in case”. GenX’ers have grown up with interactive video games, and now their kids have 4G smartphones on the horizon. That generation will never know of a time where you couldn’t casually make a comment to a Ford automobile and get the correct answer the first time.

I had urological surgery in my early twenties. It was a realatively minor surgery, but there was a complete team of ER staff, and I still needed to be put out. The GenX’ers are going to be awake with a local, and able to give the machine valuable feedback, while a small team (maybe 3 or 4) of med techs joke with both the patient and the robodoc.

I don’t have a problem with machine surgeons. Just put me out, and wake me when it’s over.

Comment by Joey1058

Made Tuesday, 16 of February , 2010 at 10:57 am

Oops. That was supposed to read “OR staff”, Not “ER staff”. Sorry!

Comment by Del

Made Tuesday, 16 of February , 2010 at 4:19 pm

Another point regarding robotic prostate surgery;

When a human doctor does prostate surgery the patient often loses some, if not all, of the nerve that makes sex enjoyable (or even possible, in some cases). With the finer level of control over the sharp parts the robot is probably more likely to leave the nerves intact during/after the procedure. If there is any promise at all of the robot leaving the fun parts then I’m not surprised most guys would demand a da Vinci.

Comment by Zool

Made Wednesday, 17 of February , 2010 at 4:32 am

I can’t wait for AI to take over health care. The way health care is in the UK these days, we rarely get to see the same doctor twice when we go to see doctors, so they never get to learn your full case history and so their judgments are limited to what they can ascertain at that moment they briefly look through a small selections of your notes. They often don’t even know what drugs you have had bad reactions to in the past, unless you tell them, because they haven’t had time to read all your notes. Plus they are usually junior doctors who are often inexperienced. Its total madness.

Yet with AI we would all have 24 hour per day medical expert care and supervision at the instant we want and need to call upon it. Plus we wouldn’t have to play Russian roulette with the risk of getting the occasional bad human doctor, as all AI doctors would be confirmed to be at a very high level of medical understanding, that would be increasing all the time.

Comment by FelipeChoque

Made Tuesday, 23 of February , 2010 at 9:32 pm

I feel really childish to say this after these great comments, but i made another sexy robot inspired by Botjunkie’s articles xD
http://felipechoque.deviantart.com/art/Sexy-Robot-a-Week-010-155235132
Of course, a robot nurse. =)

Comment by Kai Collins

Made Tuesday, 25 of May , 2010 at 11:05 am

My grandpa is also a Baby Boomer and we love him a lot..;~

Comment by Gracie Hayes

Made Sunday, 11 of July , 2010 at 10:54 am

my grandfather is also a baby boomer and he is also a war veteran”.;