Sokolove Success Blog – Our Perspective on Legal News that Matters

Remember Inspector Gadget, the technologically enhanced police detective who used devices such as a helicopter coming out of his hat or a rapidly extending arm to fight crime? Now, some surgeons have themselves become “Doctor Gadgets” by using advanced robots in the operating room to help conduct surgeries.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported recently about a surgical robot used at a New Hampshire community hospital.   The da Vinci robot (named after the artist and original Renaissance man) has been billed as a medical breakthrough which promises to make surgeries far less invasive.  The robot, which consists mainly of complex lasers and cameras, allows doctors to operate through small incisions to avoid the need to open large cavities such as the abdomen.

The Journal piece notes that the robot became a symbol of health care reform when President Barack Obama was photographed trying his hand at one of the devices during a visit to a clinic in Cleveland.  But what stuck out for me in reading the article was that Obama symbolized somebody with absolutely no training trying to use the complicated robot.

In fact, isn’t that always the case with technology?  It seems to advance faster than we learn how to harness it.

Surgical robots are highly sophisticated devices that require specialized training and extensive experience to master.  In fact, the Journal reports that surgeons with extensive robotic experience say that it takes as many as 200 surgeries before a doctor is proficient in using the machine, a usage rate that is harder for specialists at small hospitals to achieve.  And that’s troubling since the article’s main point is that these surgical robots are being marketed to hospitals as a tool to increase revenues and smaller hospitals are susceptible to that pitch.

Like lots of advanced medical products and techniques, there’s little doubt that robotic surgery can be a promising medical advancement.  But it can also lead to harm: one patient had to undergo four additional procedures due to a medical error that occurred during robotic surgery, according to the Journal article.

As patients’ advocates, we are forced to ask some hard questions about the use of this medical technology:

•    Is there too much competitive pressure to adopt robotic surgery because of its impact on a hospital’s bottom line?
•    What is the appropriate amount of training before a doctor really knows how to handle this technology safely?
•    And of course, are patients knowingly being put at risk?

We will continue to ask these and other tough questions as we watch the use of this new medical technology unfold in the OR.