Here’s a fun stat: a new report cataloging over 10,000 incident reports to the FDA found that robot surgeons were involved in 144 patient deaths and 1,391 patient injuries.
Does that sound like a lot to you? It did to the study’s authors. NBC News Reports:
“Despite widespread adoption of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery, a non-negligible number of technical difficulties and complications are still being experienced during procedures,” the study said.
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Those “technical difficulties” included “burnt or broken pieces of tools falling into the patient,” and the robot making sudden and unexpected movements. So it looks like we’re getting our robot surgeons from a slapstick comedy instead of a sci-fi dystopia. AWKWARD!
But the splashy headline numbers fail to take into account whether or not robot surgeons are more dangerous than people doctors. And the authors admit that they don’t really know if the robots are causing the injuries, or if the human hospital staff is messing up. From the study:
The results of our study come with the caveats that inherent risks exist in all surgical procedures (more so in complex procedures) and that the MAUDE data base suffers from under reporting and inconsistencies. Thus, the estimated number of adverse events per procedure are likely to be lower than the actual numbers in robotic surgery. Further, the lack of detailed information in the reports makes it difficult to determine the exact causes and circumstances underlying the events. Therefore, the sensitivity of adverse event trends to changes in reporting mechanisms, surgical team expertise, and inherent risks of surgery could not be assessed here.
Okaaaay. Robot surgeons are killing people. OR people could be using the robots incorrectly. But, hey, 144 deaths amiright?
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Either way, robot surgeons might not have to sleep or have sex with nurses, but the doctors who use them are still subject to malpractice laws, and that is going to keep us safe for at least a little while longer. It’s going to be a bad day when your robot GYN injects a flaming probe into your uterus and the hospital turns around and says “Sorry, this was a design flaw and you’ll have to sue MechWomb.” But it is not this day.
Right now, if your robot surgeon goes wrong, it’s still the hospital’s fault. Arguably the incentives are still properly aligned so that doctors will only use robotic help when it… helps.
