Now it's happening in the UK.....
The Times, Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Patients having robotic cancer surgery do no better than those undergoing conventional keyhole operations.
Doctors have said that companies must either improve the technique or cut the cost because the NHS cannot afford to spend money for little benefit.
The growth of robotic surgery has been largely driven by marketing in the US rather than clinical evidence, researchers say in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The NHS has 58 surgical robots, which cost more than £1 million each, adding about £1,000 to the cost of each operation. “Surgical technology just seems to creep its way in to clinical practice,” said David Jayne, of St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. “The big thing about robot surgery is it’s dramatically expensive. The NHS was forking out millions of pounds and we had no idea if there was any benefit.”
His trial of 471 patients having rectal cancer surgery found no significant evidence the robots made procedures easier to do. Complication and death rates were the same as for keyhole surgery.
A Stanford study of 24,000 patients found that robot-assisted operations for kidney cancer took longer and there was no difference in complication rates.
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