“Those Dumb Arms…”

Imagine this scenario: A woman needs a hysterectomy, the surgeon wants to do it robotically, instead of working directly with his hands, he'll will sit at a console, manipulating a set of robotic arms outfitted with tiny surgical instruments to do his work for him. In recent years, this imaginary scene has become reality, and robotic surgery has been recognized for being one of the most beneficial advantages in the medical field. Many Americans believe that the added usage of technologies has created a significant advantage in this modern world of surgery. With that being said, however, those people fail to realize that the added usage of robotic surgery creates a higher risk of complications among patients which caused significant rise of adverse events since robots are unable to perform range of things human surgeons can perform.

Becnel Law firm are one of the top firms dealing with medical malpractice suits. “The Da Vinci Surgical Robot” is being used as a minimally-invasive alternative to the abdominal incision prostatectomy. According their firm, robotic surgery has been the cause of serious traumatic situations for patients all over the country. According to Becnal Law Firm, “Having only the sense of sight to discern whether something has torn is far less accurate than being able to actually feel the tear with one’s own two hands. Because of this, more patients are suffering from damage to tissue and blood vessels.” These kinds of tear may leave the patient in serious bleeding conditions afterwards without the doctor’s knowledge. These robotic machines do not have any system to detect any misbehavior in blood flowness or the muscle structure that a doctor can notice if the surgery was done by hand. Becnel Law Firm also states, “Robot arms are used 10-15 times, instead of the three times recommended. As more surgeries are performed, the arms degrade, causing a loss in energy that travels down the arm to the tip of the instrument the surgeon is using.” The loss of energy may result in the machine not cooperating with the surgeon and leaving the patient with torn tissues, bleeding, scarring or bladder injuries, which are not easily curable with the machine. Degradable arm can result in an unsuccessful operation causing the patient to go through the robotic surgery once again.

Robots certainly don’t have the mentality to perform tasks that normal human beings can do easily, when faced with unexpected challenges. They can only do things that it’s assigned by the surgeons. Numbers of deaths may even rise because of the advance usage of these robots. Noticeable changes can be seen when looking at the rate of success the machines have achieved. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal,  “Because of the rising number of incidents—282 injury reports last year, including 28 deaths, up 34% from the year before—the FDA inspected Intuitive earlier this year and in July issued a warning letter stating the company hadn't reported certain safety changes to its Da Vinci robotics system, asking for additional corrective actions. The machines were used without any additional corrective actions which are supposed to be updated every year for any surgical equipment. Companies that are producing these kinds of machines are not legally documenting the effects which are causing problems in the long run. The increasing usage of these machines also increased the rate of death up to a shocking 34%, showing clear misbehaviour caused by these machines. Although recovery time may be faster, taking chances and trusting some machine that are not yet qualified  to support these kind of surgeries may not be worth it.

The Division of Biology and Medicine is composed of Alpert Medical School and the Program in Biology. They perform serious tasks with new technologies which enables them to interact with innovative research and allows them to write on behalf the equipments they use. As the usage of robotic surgeries increasing, the amount of time for the staff to actually stay in the OT is increasing, too. Alpert Medical School stated that, “Robotic assisted heart surgery can take nearly twice the amount of time that a typical heart surgery takes. In a longer surgery, the patient undergo anesthesia for a longer period of time and it costs more to staff the procedure.” The longer the staff have to stay in the OT, the slower or less  focus they will have for their patients. Study shows longer hours for residents may result in less focus on their actual patient. Not only longer anesthesiology require higher bills, it will also cause the patient to undergo a surgery that will take twice longer time than if it was done by hand. In reality, undergoing long hours of anesthesia may leave older patients to become seriously disoriented and delirious for days. Although these conditions may seem normal for going under anesthesia for long hours, being old and dealing with these complications shouldn’t be healthy for them. American Society of Anesthesiologist, an educational association reported patients having “Cognitive dysfunction,” after long hours of anesthesia, causing patient to be in risk of long term memory loss.

In conclusion, robotic surgeries are beneficial for patients sometimes in the future but not now. Robotic surgeries are causing much complications which is causing both the patient and the surgeon to be in a pitfall. Not only that, the whole medical community will be responsible if something harmful happens to the patient because of robotic surgeries. Some surgeons are not fully yet certified for doing these surgeries but even though they do so. In addition, some robots are being overused because of the financial downside of these things. If robotic surgeries really needs to be used in present day, the regulations behalf how it's going to be used should be monitored frequently.

Work Cited

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<http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BI108/BI108_2004_Groups/Group02/Group%2002%20Website/robodisadvan.htm/>

• "Muscle Strain: Symptoms, Tests, and Treatment of Muscle Strain." WebMD. WebMD. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

<http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/muscle-strain/>

• "Prostate Removal Robot Surgery Lawyers | Robotic Injury Attorney For Prostate Removals | Bad Robot Surgery." Bad Robot Surgery. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

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• "The Pros and Cons of Robotic Surgery." WSJ. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

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• "Effects of Anesthesia." Effects of Anesthesia. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

<https://www.asahq.org/>