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Robotic Surgery News Articles
Robots Minimally Invade!
as posted in 417 Magazine January 09
The man's insides look dewy. They remind me of freshly opened oysters or the gleaming fatty part of prime rib headed to the grill. This coral-colored wonderland is inhabited by da Vinci's tools, laser-tipped graspers that look like little robot alligators. Every so often, blood quickly dribbles out of an area that's just been laser-zapped.
"That's Good." Like St. John's Health System, CoxHealth just got its million-dollar da Vinci last fall. Health-care competition is a big driver of da Vinci sales, as it is with many surgery technologies: Remenber St. John's CyberKnife vs. Cox's BrainLab a few years back? The robot's maker, Intuitive Surgical, has sold more than 850 of the $1.6 million devices (not counting maintenance and physician training, which physicians must pay for themselves). That record has propelled the company to Mo. 4 on the Forbes 100 list of speedy startups. Da Vincis are in use from Japan to Romania. In Missouri, just 13 hospitals have da Vinci; in 417-land, they're only in Springfield.
Why is the da Vinci compelling enough to provoke so many big investments? One reason is that patients want it. Their motivations are cuttingly clear. Having a prostate removed via traditional open surgery means men endure a 10-inch incision from just below the belly button to just above the penis. Reattaching the bladder and urethra after removing the cancerous prostate destroys delicate nerves, causing erectile dysfunction in 50 percent of patients and incontinence problems in 10-15 percent. But that's not all: Down time includes a week recovering in the hospital, three weeks peeing through a catheter and six to eight weeks before returning to work.
