Beyond Safety: Is Robotic Surgery Sustainable? 54
Hallie Siegel writes: The release last week of the study on adverse events in robotic surgery led to much discussion on the safety and effectiveness of robotic surgical procedures. MIT Sloane's Matt Beane argues that while the hope is that this dialogue will mean safer and more effective robotic procedures in the future, the intense focus on safety and effectiveness has compromised training opportunities for new robotic surgeons, who require many hours of 'live' surgical practice time to develop their skills. Beane says that robotic surgery will likely continue to expand in proportion to other methods, given that it allows fewer surgeons to perform surgery with less trauma to the patient, but no matter how safe we make robotic surgical procedures, they will become a luxury available to a very few if we fail to address the sustainability of the practice.
Re: (Score:2)
This technology will never work. It can never be improved. The only safe thing to do is to go back to the ancient ways. We should pay people in thinktanks to ponder such things.
Gosh, I hope the new owner does something about this crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Woosh...
Re: (Score:2)
I think you are right... Time to start raising leaches again and bleeding for a fever.
Maybe we can apply some leaches to the current owner until they get better?
Re: (Score:2)
Generally, I go with trepanation. Pretty much a cure-all. 94% of surviving patients agree!
Re: (Score:2)
This is an idiotic idea, as it presumes that nowadays robotic surgery is somehow a commodity available to the masses.
I don't understand your objection?
The premise of the article seems to be that if we don't train sufficient numbers of robotic surgeons, demand for robotic surgery will outstrip the capacity of surgeons. This will result in an increase in price for robotic surgeries, and when that price exceeds what insurance companies are willing to pay, only those that are wealthy enough to self-pay for robotic surgery will be able to have it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That's what markets are for. If there's a high demand for robot operators in the medical industry, then more people will sign up for the money. That assumes that the cartels controlling access to the medical professions don't block this.
Did you read the article? It's not a problem of having enough robotic surgeon candidates, but of making sure they can all be adequately trained.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you read the article? It's not a problem of having enough robotic surgeon candidates, but of making sure they can all be adequately trained.
In a country with the most massive education and training infrastructure in the world? I don't buy it.
Personal Expreience (Score:5, Interesting)
Complete Adrenalectomy.
Done at 7AM on Monday went home noon on Tuesday afternoon. Nothing but Tylonel, pain free by Wed morning. Dr. said less than a cup of blood was lost.
Now I have 5 cool looking, little holes that I tell people were gunshot wounds.
He used a Da Vinci robot [davincisurgery.com].
Alternative was open surgery, complete with a 6 inch incision and a week in the hospital.
Re: (Score:2)
If the GOP get back in then most healthcare luxury (Score:1)
If the GOP get back in then most healthcare will be come a luxury.
And good luck paying for that when there are X3 more H1B's and maybe even no min wage.
Sustainable? (Score:2)
We can't just keep digging up fossil robotic surgeons, that will only last another hundred years. It's time we started developing renewable robots.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll crank up my SUH (Sports Utility Hospital) for you. It does eight robotic surgeons per patient.
I here the SHUH (Sport Hybrid Utility Hospital) can do 12 now using regenerative technology...
Possible solution. (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue seems to be that while conventional surgery requires help from students robotic surgery does not. It becomes very difficult for a student to do part of the surgery and thereby learn by doing. A possible solution would be better simulations so that a student can learn by doing. I think it is a very different than working on a cadaver or simulated patient using conventional methods. The main one being that there is already a separation from the patient by the machine. Every image and feedback that the doctor gets through the robotic surgery device can be simulated by software. It can be programmed to simulate problems so the doctor has to deal with more realistic issues. In effect a flight simulator for surgery.
Re:Animals (Score:4, Informative)
I'm an anesthesiologist. I put people to sleep for cardiac surgery. My hospital does around 400-500 hearts a year... and we don't kill any dogs.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm an anesthesiologist. I put people to sleep for cardiac surgery. My hospital does around 400-500 hearts a year... and we don't kill any dogs.
So maybe I'm not up to date, or things are/were different in research hospitals.
My personal info was based on stories told by my mother, in about the '60s, when she was a special duty RN at the University of Michigan hospital, often handling cardiac recovery.
My favorite was the one where the UofMich hospital cafeteria, which had been purely open seating, established
Re: (Score:1)
So maybe I'm not up to date, or things are/were different in research hospitals.
My personal info was based on stories told by my mother...
And thus spoke every ill informed "expert" on the Internet. Research hospitals aren't different to this extent. Kindly desist from spouting your fellatious (sic) brain farts from the comfort of your arm chair.
Re: (Score:2)
What hospital is that? (Score:2)
I'm an anesthesiologist. I put people to sleep for cardiac surgery. My hospital does around 400-500 hearts a year... and we don't kill any dogs.
What hospital is that? I'll want to avoid it if I ever need heart surgery.
Seriously: How does your cardiac unit's mortality and morbidity rate stack up against those of hospitals where practice surgery on live animal, models, at least where the surgeon is new to the procedure, is more common?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Will they Sustain? (Score:1)
Buzzword Saturation Limit Reached (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Do what the military does... Just convert all this to acronyms, mostly with 3 letters... Trust me, you will feel better in no time, just nobody will know for sure what you are talking about.
Hacker Team (Score:2)
How will we know the robotic surgeons have installed the most recent security updates? Will they be WiFi enabled so the teenager sitting in the hospital cafeteria can use them to play Operation and try to light up my nose while trying to take out my funny bone?
wrong question (Score:2)
the real question is when will we advance this technology far enough to not just be an assistive device for surgeons to actually being the surgeons?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I'd beg to differ. When you cut a human body open you're likely to find a relatively standard set of organs. Even with all conditions and permutations it is a whole less open-ended than say driving a car, where arguably a lot of odd conditions could happen at any time. In short, there's a few vital functions that that the body must uphold and if a robot surgeon does he's not making anything worse. He might not cure everything, but that's not the point.
Re: (Score:2)
Humans are squishy and flexible. Computers are not good with this - the only way to even simulate soft-body physics is sheer computational brute force. It's nightmarishly complicated just trying to predict which shame a blob of liver is going to assume if you poke it in a certain place.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: A Waldo is not a robot. (Score:2)
They are called robots for the same reason that radio controled fighting toys on television are called robots. Remotely operated devices that mimic the movements of their operators were once called slave devices. The term robot comes from Chech where it meant a slave laborer!
Re: (Score:2)
The term robot comes from Chech where it meant a slave laborer!
I always thought it came from polish, meaning worker.
Re: (Score:1)
Hackers can now HACK their victims during surgery (Score:1)
Now you'll have to worry about the surgeon's wifi access point :(
with cleartext passwords that are never changed from the default.
The malware will be called Hack and Slash (for obvious reasons).
Worst summary ever. (Score:2)
maybe not now... (Score:2)
Well, maybe it's not yet ready for regular use, but in the end when the robots have been refined, it will be the ONLY way one still wants a surgery.. It's not like regular surgeon doesn't make mistakes, it sadly happens too often, but that no wonder, they are only human too..