CAJ - Advantages of Robotic Surgery

When you are in need of a surgery, you obviously want the best surgeons for the job. You want to know their faces, know they know what they do and trust them and their abilities. But why should you agree on the use of surgical robots? If the surgeons can do their job, why should you want a robot to perform surgery on you even if he is operated by those surgeons. A similar question can be asked by hospitals. Why should they invest tons of money when all they get is a machine who has to be operated by surgeons? If I have the surgeons and they do a fine job, why the extra investment?
In this post I will tell you some advantages of surgical robots and why maybe choosing a robotic surgery over a regular one might not be such a bad idea.

For the patients:
Patients who undergo robotic surgery usually recover quicker than those of a regular surgery. This is due to the fact that a robotic surgery is less exhausting and traumatizing for the human body. While regular surgeries are usually done through one large incision, robotic surgery can be performed through several smaller ones. If you take the example of a heart surgery. In a regular heart surgery, the patients chest needs to be "cracked open" meaning that a roughly 30 cm long incision is made in the center of the the chest. This incision severs the muscles which hold the rib cages together.

Sounds pretty painful, right? In a heart surgery performed with surgical robots, all it takes are three or four incisions (all about one cm long) in between the ribs.

This allows the surgeons to access the heart without having to break through the chest. The smaller incisions mean less pain and bleeding for the patient and the risk of infections is also reduced. Overall, the incisions heal quicker because of their size meaning that the patient recovers faster and is sooner able to live his normal life again. Plus, a shorter hospital stay and quicker recovery also saves money.

For the surgeons:
Surgeries, especially complicated ones, are very time consuming and exhausting for surgeons. They have to be fully concentrated the whole time as even a tiny slip with the surgical instruments could have catastrophic consequences. A huge problem for surgeons are hand tremors which can occur during long surgeries. A tremor is an involuntary shaking movement which can be really bad if it happens during a surgery where surgeons need to make minute movements. Usually these tremors, especially if they occur regularly, mean the end of a surgeons active career as it would be unsafe for patients and the hospital would fear law suits. Surgical robots, however, can ignore these tremors as the movements are small and the robot only reacts to bigger ones. When the surgeon's hand has a tremor, the robotic arm stays still. With surgical robots, a tremor no longer equals the end of a surgeon's career.
Surgeons are, despite their reputation, only human. And like every human they sometimes need to sneeze or something itches. During regular surgeries, this would be a problem as the surgeons have their surgical instruments in their hands and those instruments need to stay in place. While operating a surgical robot, surgeons can simply let go of the machine and the robotic arms stay where they are.
Another major benefit is that the surgical robot gives physicians a better few and access to the site of surgery. The surgeons have a 3D image of the patient's inside in front of them and the robot mimics the movements of their hands making robotic surgery easier and more natural for surgeons than laparoscopic surgery.

For the hospitals:
For a regular surgery, even a simple one, you need two or three surgeons, an anesthesiologist and several nurses. That's a lot of staff. Robotic surgery requires fewer people to be in the operating room. This lowers the costs for each surgery and allows them to take care of more patients.

As stated above, patients recover quicker. This allows hospitals to discharge them sooner, reducing costs too.


You say, there are plenty of benefits coming from robotic surgery and for my part, they had me at "lesser pain".