New Report Finds Robotic Surgery Not Without Risk and Injury

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NBC News is reporting that while robotic surgery is becoming increasingly more popular, there are risks involved in these surgeries.

“After reviewing more than 10,000 incident reports from the Food and Drug Administration from 2000 to 2013, it was discovered that robots were accountable for 144 patient deaths and for 1,391 patient injuries. In the reports involving death, they were was very little information on the specific cause. This means it is nearly impossible to deduce whether the death was the result of human error, an issue with the robot’s performance or the risks associated with surgical procedures.”

Obviously, more information is required to reduce the surgical errors but what seems clear is that robotic surgery is not a panacea for avoiding medical mistakes.

“Despite widespread adoption of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery, a non-negligible number of technical difficulties and complications are still being experienced during procedures,” the study said.
Some of the noted problems included burnt or broken pieces of tools that fell into the patient (14.7 percent), electrical sparking (10.5 percent) and robots making unintended movements (8.6 percent)- with the robots responsible for 52 injuries and two deaths.”

Mark Abramson
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