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Robot Doctors. Good? Bad? Other? Let us know…

Posted by  in Monday, February 23rd 2009   
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Robot Doctors…

Love the idea?  Hate the Idea?  Let us know.  Leave some comments

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One Response to “Robot Doctors. Good? Bad? Other? Let us know…”

  1. callalily says:
    March 2, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    Robots certainly have a role to play in medicine, but the one I am most familiar with is not superior to older technologies, it’s just newer and shinier. I am referring to the Da Vinci robot, which is used in radical prostatectomies (RPs) and other procedures.

    I write a blog for prostate cancer patients (prostatecancerblog.net), and I find that most are enthralled with robots regardless of the merits. Robots are what I would call “cybersexy”. The robotic laparascopic prostate surgery is aggressively marketed to doctors and then hyped to patients, and so, use of the robot has skyrocketed. In general, robots do a poorer job of cancer control, unless the surgeon using the device is part of a clique of very experienced surgeons. It takes about 700 procedures to really get robotic surgery right, and only a fraction of doctors who do RPs have this kind of experience. Too bad that the losers here are cancer patients. The winners? Shareholders of Intuitive Surgical.

    Leah F. Cohen

    prostatecancerblog.net

    A project of Malecare

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