What could have been a John Henry style man-triumphs-over-technology story with outsized language and overheated quotes turns out to be a fairly straightforward, clear-eyed piece of reporting – but with some missing elements.
Robots are supposed to make everything better.They are smarter than us, faster than us and less prone to error, the thinking goes. Here is one piece of evidence that robots, in their current stage of development, are not actually able to perform at least one important surgical task better than humans.
The reporter notes that the robots cost $1.5 million apiece, a cost that has to be asorbed at some point by the insurer or the patients. The story also includes some great context from Dr. Tommaso Falcone at Cleveland Clinic saying spending a lot of money on robots might not be money well spent.
But we’re not given any per-patient per-treatment cost estimates and we’re not told that the robots may drive up cost with longer operating room time and added costs for facility, anesthesia and surgeon – huge cost drivers.
There are two possible benefits here. 1. People spend less time in surgery to achieve roughly the same outcome and potentially a better outcome, which, by all accounts, is better. 2. Hospitals and medical groups spend less money on robots and are allowed to devote those health resources elsewhere. Both are not so much quantified as addressed. In order to truly establish the second point, one would need to perform a longer term and larger study to find out whether humans outperform robots on a wider range of surgeries. These $1.5 million machines are not just specific to endometriosis. They are used for hundreds of procedures, and so to decide whether they are worth the money would require more research. Still, the story is measured in its claims.
The story says that there were no complications in either group and goes on to say that the robotic surgeries took longer, making it more likely that surgeons would make mistakes (although they did not, apparently, make any mistakes.) It says in passing that "the incision is smaller (and) the manipulations are more controlled" when a surgeon works without a robot, a counter-intuitive piece of information that merited at least an additional sentence of explanation, even in a story this short.
The study seems fairly simple and perhaps a bit too small to draw any big conclusions. The story has a measured tone, though, and provides all of the necessary information for readers to judge for themselves whether a robotic surgery is a good buy. Note: originally we ruled this unsatisfactory but we missed the fact that the online story linked to the journal article.
The story could provide a source for the 5 million figure used to calculate how many women suffer from the condition, but, as far as we can tell, it doesn’t make the condition sound worse than it is.
As noted above, the comments from Falcone were essential. It might have been worth noting that both the hospitals mentioned in the story actually promote robotic surgery for endometriosis quite heavily. Here’s one example:
http://www2.northside.com/RoboticSurgery/Robotic-Surgery-At-Northside/Gynecologic-Surgeries/Robotic-Endometriosis.aspx
This was the entire point of the study and the point of the story. At least a mention of non-surgical treatments of endometriosis would have been nice, especially since the majority of cases can be treated nonsurgically.
This was one of the missing elements. At a minimum, the story should have said how many companies even make these things, how long they have been in production and how many hospitals/surgical centers have them. As far as we know, the major manufacturer is da Vinci, and we’re sure they would be glad to provide some numbers. If you just do a search on the da Vinci site of how many surgeons in western Washington use these machines for gynecological procedures, you come up with a list of 1,500 names. imagine what that would be like in an area like Los Angeles or New York?
The novelty here is that the humans beat the robots. It would have been nice to see at least a sentence about whether other studies had shown similar results with other types of surgeries. Was this the first man-vs.-machine study of this kind?
Because of the second source who was quoted, it does not appear that this story relied on a news release.
Systematic, Criteria-Driven
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
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like