Ear, nose and throat specialist Christopher Chang, MD, blogged about a Newark Star-Ledger story he saw about “surgeons on the cutting edge in fight against sleep apnea” using robotic surgery.
Chang wrote:
“My feeling is that using a robot to perform sleep apnea surgery is way overkill akin to using a $50,000 sniper rifle to kill an ant on the wall.
Everything the daVinci robot can do can also be done without the robot with equivalent patient outcomes. In fact, without the robot, the surgery can be performed more quickly, efficiently, and with less anesthesia than with the robot.
There are occasions where the robot may be helpful with ENT (ear, nose, throat) surgical procedures, but this is not one of them.”
You can search on our blog and find many other examples of robotic surgery hype.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
Comments (4)
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Pdm68
January 6, 2012 at 2:57 pmSo,tell us how ? All he says is it’s using a high power rifle to kill an ant but never told us anything scientific to back it up
Gary Schwitzer
January 6, 2012 at 3:16 pmI guess you missed what he wrote: “Everything the daVinci robot can do can also be done without the robot with equivalent patient outcomes. In fact, without the robot, the surgery can be performed more quickly, efficiently, and with less anesthesia than with the robot.”
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