An example of how major-market television news delivers gee-whiz, awestruck segments on robotic surgery. This is from the NBC station in Los Angeles. The formula is familiar: surgeon comes on the set still wearing scrubs he says he just did 3 robotic procedures that day one of them was “first single-site, single-incision gallbladder removal done by a community hospital in state of California” It amounted to more than 6 minutes of f…
“Adoption of robotic technology fueled rapid growth in the use of prostatectomy at a time when the incidence of prostate cancer decreased, investigators reported (at an American Urological Association conference in Washington, DC, according to MedPageToday . They quoted Hugh J. Lavery, MD, of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York: “The cancer outcomes and fiscal policy implications of this shift may be substantial.” And the s…
A piece in Barron’s, “Robots in Search of Added Employment,” offers a good update on the proliferation of daVinci robotic surgical systems. From the piece: No other big health-care company is putting up (earnings) numbers like (theirs). The robot was used last year in about 450,000 surgeries of various kinds around the world. The US accounts for nearly three-fourths of the installed base of 2,585 daVinci Systems. Robotic pros…
…n by a randomized trial to improve the outcomes of prostate surgery. Indeed, a 2009 study showed that while patients had shorter hospital stays and fewer surgical complications like blood loss when they underwent this kind of robotic surgery, they later “experienced more … incontinence and erectile dysfunction.” Similar problems are occurring with robotic surgery for other cancers. In other words, this is a pseudo-innovation — a technology that i…
To a man with a new hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a hospital and/or surgical team with a new robotic surgery system, everything looks like a prime candidate for the robot. And then there’s this about “off-label” use of the robot for thyroid surgery: Reuters Health reports: “Surgery to remove part of the thyroid gland is twice as expensive when it’s done with the help of a robot rather than by a surgeon al…
…me.” With regard to some things, maybe. But not with regard to health news. The paper has already failed in that mission.” Finally, for absurdity in robot hype, see a Seattle doc’s You Tube video of how he used a robotic surgical system to fold a paper airplane – and see how the blogger known as The Skeptical Scalpel grounds that hype. …
My former health journalism grad student, Hiran Ratnayake of the Wilmington (DE) News Journal, reports “Robotic surgery gains ground in Delaware hospitals; Not all convinced new technique is best option.” Excerpts: “The robot is the classic example of where good quality studies of their effectiveness compared to other available interventions have never been done,” said Dr. Sean R. Tunis, an internist and founder of the …
… news coverage of these drugs, journalism could provide a better public service by dropping back to address the bigger picture for news consumers and health care consumers. Connect the dots on the Provenges, the Makenas, the robotic surgery systems and proton beam facilities – more often, more emphatically, more broadly – to help citizens understand why we lead the world in percentage of the GDP devoted to health care spending withou…
Gina Kolata’s NYT piece, “Results Unproven, Robotic Surgery Wins Converts,” looks at how “robot-assisted prostate surgery has grown at a nearly unprecedented rate.” Excerpts from the story: • “..robot-assisted prostate surgery costs more — about $1,500 to $2,000 more per patient. And it is not clear whether its outcomes are better, worse or the same.” • “Meanwhile, marketing has moved into th…
Paul Levy, former hospital CEO, on his Not Running a Hospital blog, writes, “More robots, more questions.” The topic this time: robotic partial knee replacement surgery. In it, he links to the BioLogic Equity Research site, and its article, “Anatomy of a Deceptive Direct to Consumer Robotic Surgery Marketing Campaign.” Then, days later, Levy blogged, “Beating a dead robot,” this time about robotic rectal can…
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