Robotic Surgery

As you will have seen in the press, robotic surgery is the flavour of the month in general terms in medicine

I have just returned from another very successful camp in Jamkhed, India where Prof Marco Lanzetta and I performed over 45 operations in those who are desperately needy. GICAM is the organisation that helps us in this pro bono work.

The people in Jamkhed are very poor, having little to fall back on, little health care and no real accessibility to advanced care other than what we provide through the Comprehensive Rural Health Project run by Dr Ravi.

I mention this wonderful project partly to keep you updated but also to draw comparison to our own extremely expensive system.

Unfortunately there is no evidence yet that Robotic surgery improves outcomes beyond that already enjoyed as a consequence of computer assisted surgery which Dr Miniter has practiced for many years with great success. Of course we too will offer robotic surgery to those who request it but one must be very careful not only to keep costs under control as robotic surgery adds significant costs for all but also to keep in mind that it adds surgical time; surgical time must be kept as short as possible. Longer surgical times are associated with increased infection rates.

Paul Miniter