Robotic surgery was the shiniest new toy in the arsenal for hospitals and surgeons, used as a competitive hook that brings in millions of dollars of added revenue over similar though more traditional surgeries. Yet there’s no significant clinical proof the $1.5 million machines from Intuitive Surgical Inc. add any medical benefit or are any safer or easier on patients than the other methods, according to a year-long series of reports by Robert Langreth. Langreth found that the growth of robotic surgery, which has exploded in the last five years to almost a half-million procedures, has been driven by misleading marketing, compounded by the lack of a comprehensive system to mandate proper training or track effectiveness and safety. Less than a month after Langreth’s first story on Feb. 27, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warned doctors the robots shouldn’t be the first choice for hysterectomy and regulators in Massachusetts warned of the potential for rare complications. Langreth’s stories, widely disseminated on medical blogs, have also spurred hospitals to begin changing training programs and gynecologists to form a working group to produce new training standards. Meanwhile Intuitive has lost 36% of its market value as sales of the systems have declined.
