Actually, it is compelling. All things being equal you give an experienced surgeon an advanced tool and get 30% reduction in hospital stay along with less damage to your kidney function
From a patient point of view it is a big difference. Hospital stay is really expensive even if you have insurance. Hospitals charge like 10000$ per day and copayment foe hospital stay is usually hundreds of dollars.
Of course, it means that hospitals can process more patients and generate more profit, but it also reduces surgery wait times, which is critical for a patient with a tumor, because the longer your wait, the more likely for the tumor to spread
No, we don't assume that its is better because it is robot. We assume it is better because it was specifically designed to give to a surgeon a better instrument. It allows more range of instruments movement and degree of freedom and eliminates issues with surgeon hands trembling.
Yes, there is no statistically significant evidence yet that it is better, but there is no statistical evidence that it is worse. I don't think it is beneficial to stop using this technology based on cost effectiveness.
I happened to had a tumor on my kidney 6 month ago, so I actually had to make a decision between regular laparoscopy and Da Vinci.
Tge surgeon who did not have access to the robot system said that robot is just marketing BS and he would do a surgery just fine. However, because the tumor was on the back side of the kidney it would require rotating kidney out of the place and would be a bit challenging. But he was confident that it could be done
THe surgeon with robot said that tumor position is not a problem for a robot whatsoever. So I went with the robot.
So, back to OP, the robot is better because it allows to perform surgery in places where it is not possible to go with non robotic instruments.
I also have plenty of anecdata from people who had similar surgeries performed on them with different techiques. It terms of post op recovery da Vinci wins unanimously. I had surgery on Tuesday and was back to work next Monday
I have some robot experience, so I assume any robot is hot garbage until proved otherwise. In the links you've provided, the robot seems to do better than baseline in prostate surgeries, and is now the standard approach.
>Actually, it is compelling. All things being equal you give an experienced surgeon an advanced tool and get 30% reduction in hospital stay along with less damage to your kidney function
First you have to trust the surgeon not to be shilling in his report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/robotic-surgery...