A story from Robert Langreth at Bloomburg, based on a scientific study. Excerpts:
Surgery to remove the uterus using a $1.5 million robot from Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) doesn’t reduce complications and may raise pneumonia risk compared with conventional less-invasive techniques, according to a second extensive study to find no added benefit from the devices.
Researchers examined data from about 16,000 women who had hysterectomies for benign conditions in 2009 and 2010. The robot operations cost hospitals $2,489 more per procedure with a similar complication rate as the standard practice of removing the uterus with minimally invasive equipment, according to the study released in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
The results released yesterday are from the second large-scale research published this year to find higher costs with no added benefit for robotic hysterectomy.
In February, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that robotic hysterectomies for benign conditions cost hospitals $2,189 more per procedure than the same surgery without the robot. That research, which looked at data from 441 hospitals from 2007 to 2010, showed complication rates were 5.5 percent for the robot surgery and 5.3 percent for a less invasive hysterectomy.
The response from Intuitive. Regular readers will recognize it as a variant on, "Our patients are sicker."
Intuitive Surgical, in an e-mail, said patients in the study getting robotic surgery tended to be older, heavier and had a higher rate of chronic conditions.
Surgery to remove the uterus using a $1.5 million robot from Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) doesn’t reduce complications and may raise pneumonia risk compared with conventional less-invasive techniques, according to a second extensive study to find no added benefit from the devices.
Researchers examined data from about 16,000 women who had hysterectomies for benign conditions in 2009 and 2010. The robot operations cost hospitals $2,489 more per procedure with a similar complication rate as the standard practice of removing the uterus with minimally invasive equipment, according to the study released in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
The results released yesterday are from the second large-scale research published this year to find higher costs with no added benefit for robotic hysterectomy.
In February, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that robotic hysterectomies for benign conditions cost hospitals $2,189 more per procedure than the same surgery without the robot. That research, which looked at data from 441 hospitals from 2007 to 2010, showed complication rates were 5.5 percent for the robot surgery and 5.3 percent for a less invasive hysterectomy.
The response from Intuitive. Regular readers will recognize it as a variant on, "Our patients are sicker."
Intuitive Surgical, in an e-mail, said patients in the study getting robotic surgery tended to be older, heavier and had a higher rate of chronic conditions.
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