Robot Surgery Damaging Patients Rises With Marketing

Bloomberg.com  By Robert Langreth  Oct 8, 2013 12:00 AM ET    Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver announced last year that Warren Kortz, a general surgeon on the medical staff, was the first in the Rocky Mountain region to use a technique known as robotic surgery to remove gall bladders through one incision in the belly button. Robot-assisted surgery differs from other minimally-invasive operations in which doctors stand over the patient and manually manipulate instruments and a tiny camera through multiple small incisions.  The operation, performed while the doctor sits at a video-game-like console, was “taking advantage of another breakthrough in robotic surgery” and is “easier on the patient,” the hospital said in a press release.  “It’s Star Wars stuff,” Kortz was quoted as saying in another article put out by the hospital touting another operation, robot-assisted parathyroid surgery, in 2010. “My prediction is it will eventually replace everything else.”  What the hospital and Kortz didn’t reveal was the risk. Even as Kortz promoted robotic surgery, 10 patients he treated suffered injuries or complications between 2008 and 2011, according to an April complaint by the Colorado Medical Board.  Read more