The Lure of the Robot

Robotic surgery is the preferred choice of men today to pluck out there cancerous prostates.  But is it any better than traditional surgery?  Is the promise of fewer side effects living up to the hype?  Is there a financial incentive for physicians and providers to recommend the robot? 

From New York Times, March 11, 2011 ... "Hospitals With Robots Do More Prostate Cancer Surgery"

"Hospitals that buy surgical robots end up performing more prostate cancer operations, suggesting that technology has become a driving force behind decisions about men’s cancer care, new research shows..."

But is it better than any other treatment or doing nothing at all?  There's no evidence to say one way or the other....  

"But," the article continues, "that hasn’t stopped hospitals from conducting intense marketing campaigns that imply surgery using the high-tech robot gives prostate cancer patients a better result."

Ben Org, author of All About The Prostate, put a finer point on the issue and financial incentives in the general promotion of robotic surgery, when he wrote in the following email.... 

"Follow the money. From 2001-06, use of the da Vinci system — the only robot available for this operation — rose from one per cent to 40 per cent of all radical prostatectomies. During that time, the stock price of da Vinci’s maker, Sunnyvale, California-based Intuitive Surgical Inc., increased 11-fold.


"To compete for patients, more hospitals are buying robotic systems and advertising faster recovery times. More doctors are taking the two-day training to learn Intuitive’s da Vinci Surgical System.

"Dr. Steve Freedland of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, said he doubts the findings will dampen the enthusiasm for robotic surgery — he termed it "mass hysteria over new technology" — because surgeons will claim better-than-average results when they talk to men considering their options.

"'One of the reasons why health care in this country is extremely expensive is because it’s assumed that what’s newest must be best,' Freedland said.

"The researchers found that the less-invasive surgery was more popular among more affluent, highly educated men. So it might be that those patients are more likely to seek help for urinary and sexual problems compared to men who had traditional surgery, said Dr. Ashutosh Tewari, director of the Prostate Cancer Institute at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.


"The take-home message for men is they need to be more skeptical of the planted stories from device manufacturers or other promotions."