Unnecessary Medical Procedures and the Dangers of Robot Surgery

Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that in a new report aimed at improving healthcare and controlling runaway costs, a coalition of leading medical societies has identified nearly 100 medical procedures, tests and therapies that are overused and often unnecessary. The medical interventions — including early cesarean deliveries, CT scans for head injuries in children and annual Pap tests for middle-aged women — may be necessary in some cases, but are often not beneficial and may even cause harm. 'We are very concerned about the rapidly escalating cost of healthcare,' says Dr. Bruce Sigsbee. 'This is not healthy for the country, and something has to be done.' Each of the specialty medical societies has provided a list of five procedures that physicians and patients should question about the overuse of medical tests and procedures that provide little benefit and in some cases harm. A 2012 report from the independent Institute of Medicine estimated total waste in the system at 30%, or $750 billion a year. 'Millions of Americans are increasingly realizing that when it comes to healthcare, more is not necessarily better,' says Dr. Christine K. Cassel." According to pigrabbitbear, it's the robots we should be wary of. He writes "'We are committed to helping victims of robot surgery receive the medical care and compensation they deserve. As both a lawyer and a licensed medical doctor, Dr. Francois Blaudeau has made it his mission to fight for the victims of traumatic complications as a result of botched robot surgery.' That's the opening salvo from the medical malpractice lawyers who run the slick fear factory of a website, BadRobotSurgery.com. According to the doctor-lawyers behind it—doctor-lawyers like Francois Blaudeau, MD, JD, FACHE, FCLM—'thousands of people have suffered severe and critical complications at the hands of surgical robots. In fact, 'robotic surgery has been linked to many serious injuries and severe complications, including death.'

Two unrelated things?

[Thiez]

Why are these two unrelated topics in a single post? The word 'robot' does not even occur in any of the 'Unnecessary Medical Procedures' articles (does using 'find' count as RTFA'ing?)

Robots good humans bad

[wvmarle]

Human surgery has been linked to many serious injuries and severe complications, including death.

And I think many more such cases overall than for robot surgery. Horror stories can be found always, just a matter of searching hard enough.

The question is: which one is more reliable overall?

Where is circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need to see the list to know it's not there. Where is routine infant male genital mutilation? You want to save a quick $300 bucks? And possibly thousands more as I've had to spend OUT OF MY OWN POCKET to deal with complications?

For fuck's sake.

Re:Two unrelated things?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're related by both being mentioned in the same Slashdot post, QED. Which part of circular reasoning are you failing to understand?

Huh?

[pesho]

Why is an injury lawyer’s marketing campaign posted at all on Slashdot, let alone next to an unrelated LA time article? The article quoted in the second part of the post actually says exactly the opposite of what the post states. Does anybody on slashdot know what 'editor' means? What grades did the slashdot editors get on reading and comprehension on elementary school?

Time Magazine has an article as well

[archer, the]

In it, they report uninsured patients get charged 11x what would be allowed if the patient qualified for Medicare. It used to be health insurance companies would be able to get rates 20% to 30% over the Medicare rate. Now, because of hospital consolidation, the insurance companies are being forced to pay 5x the Medicare rate. The author wasn't able to find any actual financial reason for the markup. (Things like, $1.50 for an acetaminophen pill, when a bottle of 100 costs $1.50. Or a blood glucose test strip costing $18, when supermarkets sell them for $0.60.)
Here's the article. [time.com]

Article forgot to mention...

[erikvcl]

... one of the most common unnecessary (and harmful) medical procedures. Male circumcision.