Robotic Surgery Progress: Is Resistance Futile ?
I read this article “Robotic surgery progress: Is resistance futile?” recently published in the ACS surgery news. It is nice to clear the myth that robotic surgery is expensive and embrace the fact that what we are doing now may not be cost effective now and is that we believe that the next few generations of this technology will become the state of the art and will become highly cost effective. Although there are numerous articles to show that robotic surgery is cost effective “now”, there is still a consensus, especially with HMO insurance companies that this technology is expensive. Dr. Henry Pitt from Temple University Health System compares robotic surgery to that of computers and the application of Moore’s Law, by which when technology advances rapidly the price eventually comes down. I would like to also compare this with modern day telephones and its increased cost only to give you much better quality and variety of services. Robotic surgery has increased from 20,000 procedures in 2009 to close to 35,000 procedures in 2012 with a vast increase in general surgical procedures.
In some ways robotic assisted surgery is like laparoscopic surgery when the world was skeptical about this new form of surgery and its additional cost only a few years later to become a ‘standard of care’ for many procedures. Currently, robotic surgery certainly is in the learning curve of many surgeons and it remains to be seen what data will emerge in the years to come about it usefulness. I am positive about the data.