Somehow someone added me to the mailing list for news releases from a hospital in Mumbai. How/why this happens, one can only guess.
But if they’re going to send ’em, I may write about ’em – even though maybe not with the slant the PR folks wanted. The latest news release from them sheds light on how robotic surgery is promoted in other places.
Excerpts of the news release:
In 70 days, the specialist doctors conduct surgical procedures using robotic technology to save lives and create a milestone
“giving a new lease of life to the patients with greater precision and safety.”
“the first in Mumbai to conduct rare surgeries using the Robotic Technology, including Robotic Adrenalectomy (Adrenal gland tumour), Robotic Anterior Exenteration (Urinary bladder cancer in females), Robotic Radical Cystectomy (Urinary bladder, creating a new bladder in same position), Video Endoscopic Inguinal Lymphadenectomy (Lymph nodes removal from groin in case of penile cancer), Sacrocolpopexy (repair pelvic prolapse), and Robotic Surgery for Endometriosis.”
“expert doctors with good experience in performing such procedures conduct each operation meticulously with reduced pain and reduced risk of infection to the patient. Moreover, robotic technology for surgery is in the pipeline at the hospital for several other fields such as ENT/Head-Neck; Colorectal; Liver and Cardiac.“
We’ve come to expect that no data are provided in hospital news releases – and there were none.
We’ve come to expect that hospitals promote and justify their expensive investment in robotic surgical systems – and that happened herein.
In the past, we reported on one study that reported “Three experienced surgeons needed more than 1,600 cases to achieve acceptable outcomes with robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy.” One can only wonder what the learning curve is for the “rare surgeries” described in the news release. Of course, one can only wonder because there is no hint of that issue in the hospital news release.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
The tale of two “negative” studies. Or, how spin is applied to make research findings look more impressive. A must read. https://johnmandrola.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-negative-studies
The @nytimes chose to interview one of the editors of the @AnnalsofIM (publisher of this paper) who "gushed with extraordinary glee: It’s huge! There are very few things that reduce your mortality by 30%."
Turns out coffee is not one of those few things despite all that glee. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1533202075928215558
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