In a Reuters Health story, “Is robot prostate surgery, best for quality of life,” one of the researchers commented on the big push” to promote robotic surgery, and many patients “assume it’s the way to go.” But the researchers say their findings:
“serve as a reminder that popular enthusiasm for robotic prostatectomy merits temperance.”
On PharmaGossip, blogger Jack Friday asks: (Correction: Jack posted it, but it was an op-ed by The Healthcare Channel.)
And, catching up to a Gina Kolata NYT piece of last week, on whether the new health care legislation will impact “chronic overuse of medical care,” there were several gem quotes:
The joke among radiologists, said Dr. Howard P. Forman, a radiologist and health services researcher at Yale, is that “the indication for getting a head CT after a car accident is if you have a head.”
“The minute you attack overutilization you will be called a Nazi before the day is out,” said Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton.
Comments (2)
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Gerri Shaftel Constant
April 5, 2010 at 5:07 pmIt’s good to see more info coming out about realities of robotic surgery. Some surgeons love the new technology, –it’s fun, like a video game– but having watched robotic heart surgery, I’d be very cautious before getting it. Equipment snafus caused the surgery I watched to last longer than conventional heart surgery. It also felt a bit strange watching a software engineer in the o.r. guide the surgeon through each step of the surgery. All that said the patient who had the surgery recovered just fine. But yikes! I’d have had more faith in the surgeons hands.
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