Robotic Surgery Linked to 144 Deaths | Hacker News Reader

Robotic Surgery Linked to 144 Deaths

bbc.com

15 pointspacaro14 comments

"The researchers did not, however, compare accident rates with similar operations in which robots were not used. Their study has not been peer reviewed."

In other words, nothing but FUD.

> Their paper says 144 deaths, 1,391 injuries and 8,061 device malfunctions were recorded out of a total of more than 1.7 million robotic procedures carried out between January 2000 and December 2013.

So that's 0.00847% death rate, 0.082% injury rate, and 0.47% device malfunction rate.

(If I did the exponent math correctly, feel free to check. Edit: thanks for checking :)

1.7 million, so you're off by a factor 1000

Their paper says 144 deaths, 1,391 injuries and 8,061 device malfunctions were recorded out of a total of more than 1.7 million robotic procedures carried out between January 2000 and December 2013.

These 144 deaths are out of 1.7 million robot procedures. I think this is better than humans.

Unfortunately the study didn't actually collect any data to compare for this, making it shitty science and great media.

This article makes no sense as a standalone, if you don't compare with the other options, 144 deaths might be an amazing achievement or a worrying situation.

The Google car wasn't hit by someone today so they ran this story?

Compare "144 deaths... more than 1.7 million robotic procedures" to "3.7 million surgical procedures at 102 hospitals in the Netherlands during 1991 – 2005, postoperative mortality from all causes was observed in 67,879 patients" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perioperative_mortality)

Seems like a huge improvement over non-robotic procedures, though, the comparison is obviously flawed.

This is about as meaningless as not comparing it to anything.

A valid comparison would be comparing the operations conducted with robotic assistance to a similar operation conducted using traditional means.

When there is no comparable treatment e.g. if there is no traditional surgery for the same endoscopic robotic procedure than the effectiveness of alternative treatment's needs to be investigated.

Other things needs to be accounted as well mostly post-op deaths and lasting side effects, endoscopic surgeries are known for having less severe effects at the post op stage as they do not affect as much tissue as a traditional surgery.

On the other hand endoscopic surgeries tend to miss things that might be apparent in a traditional surgery such as additional conditions or secondaries since a traditional surgery gives a much "wider" view of the well the insides as well as getting additional information the tactile feedback from touching the actual tissue.

Another data sets which will be interesting to see is what is the damage or loss of life due to waiting for robotic procedures as they require special equipment and specially trained surgical and support staff.

And there are probably countless other valuable data sets which us non-medical professionals can't even begin to fathom, but comparing a narrow field of surgery conducted in the states to general surgery information in the Netherlands is pretty meaningless to my eyes...

Begs the question, how many human operations have issues in comparison?

It does raise that question[0]. I wonder what the disparity is on a percentage basis, and what the criterion used to decide robotic vs. human are. If one entity has tougher, riskier surgeries it could skew the results.

[0]http://begthequestion.info/

> The researchers did not, however, compare accident rates with similar operations in which robots were not used.

Aaaaaaaaa.

Hacker News needs a downvote option to filter out bullshit articles like this one.

Whenever you hear any studies regarding robotic surgery, take it with a dump truck of salt. I worked at a hospital that was well known for robotic surgery and the surgeons are extremely hostile towards new technology of any sort. Any technology that has the potential to threaten their jobs in the future will have the severe bias in patient selection. The issue with these studies is the people who run them have a vested interest in ensuring that they do not show positive results.

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