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
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
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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