Robotic Surgery Controversy

Scientific Consensus: Solutions To The Robotic Surgery Controversy

When faced with medical turmoil a patient must decide to hand their body over to conventional medical processes performed by the world’s finest human doctors, or the technological alternative of surgical robots, whom are engineered for perfection, but still have many setbacks. While conventional doctors spend their life's work on their surgical trade, surgical robots are the more efficient alternative, performing tasks doctors can only dream of, the imperfections of conventional doctors contributes to a lack of efficiency, which improves robotic surgeries case to advance in the medical field and the short recovery time and lower pain associated with robotic surgery outweighs …show more content…
However, robotic surgery faces malfunctions and latency, which contributes to the rising concern over the efficiency of these procedures. Researchers at the Massachusetts institute of Technology and Chicago’s Rush University Medical center concluded in a 13 year period “144 deaths, 1,391 injuries and 8,061 device malfunctions were recorded out of a total of more than 1.7 million robotic procedures”(Robotic Surgery Linked). Due to the lack of experiments associated with this technology; falling broken parts, loss of video feeds, and uncontrolled movements have resulted in the death and injuries of many patients. While Technical malfunctions must be fixed to enhance efficiency, the imperfections associated with conventional doctors can not be fixed as easily. When compared with conventional procedures, 144 deaths over a 13 year period due to doctor malfunctions is extremely low. Carla Schaffer’s research for science translational medicine and intuitive surgical concludes “Taking the shaky human elements out of the equation could reduce risks and complications of soft-tissue surgeries, 45 million of which happen every year in the US”(Thomas). 1,391 injuries from surgical robot malfunctions do not add up to the 45 million injuries from human errors that occur each year. Along with the shaky human aspect of conventional doctors, David Lee in the division of Urology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine states “The emergence of RALP [robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy] made laparoscopic dissection technically easier”(Finkelstein 4). Surgery performed by conventional doctors are more technically difficult because they require making larger incisions, thus increasing their room for error. Larger incisions cannot be reduced to the levels performed by surgical robots, but fixing the malfunctions

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