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Nicolas McClendon
Mrs. Maxwell
British Literature
October 22, 2011
The Pros and Cons of Surgical Robots
Surgical Robots are the future of all medical procedures and surgeries to be performed on
patients across the world and will be widely accepted as the next generation of medical
technology. Some may believe this statement without question, while others may disagree
completely. Unlike basic human speculation, these robots are not humanoid, meaning that the
robot looks and moves like a human; in fact, these robots can consist of a single arm component
(wired.com). Surgical robots are not a new topic; on the contrary, these types of robots were
introduced around 1985 with the Puma 560 being the first robot to perform surgery
(allaboutroboticsurgery.com). The Puma 560 was created so that doctors could perform
neurosurgical biopsies on patients without making too many mistakes and so they could operate
with much greater precision (allaboutroboticsurgery.com). The Puma 560 then evolved into a
more complex robot called the PROBOT, which was developed by Imperial College London
around 1992 (allaboutroboticsurgery.com). Unlike the Puma 560, the PROBOT was specialized
in removing and operating on prostatic tissue; however, this robot was made to aid in the surgery
instead of completely taking over, as did the PUMA 560 (allaboutroboticsurgery.com). While
Imperial London College was developing the PROBOT, the ISS or Integrated Surgical Systems
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was marketing the ROBODOC, which was the first robot ever to assist in Total Hip Arthroplasty
or a THA(allaboutroboticsurgery.com). The ROBODOC was specially designed tooperate with
great precision on hip replacement surgeries (allaboutroboticsurgery.com). Because of its
success in this type of surgery, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the ROBODOC
making it the only active robotic system authorized and cleared by the FDA for orthopedic
surgeries (allaboutroboticsurgery.com).In 1994, the world of robotics was revolutionized with
the introduction of the ORTHOPILOT, a system that first implemented the navigation system of
all robots used for surgery today. All these robots have their strengths, which some find
comforting,but they also have weaknesses causing others to be repelled and afraid. A common
misconception about surgical robots is that the robot takes over the surgery; on the contrary,
most surgical robots are controlled by surgeons and/or are made to assist the surgeon. Surgical
robots are made to do one thing, and that is to perform surgery. Surgical robots perform surgery
with extreme accuracy and provide the patient with a minimally invasive surgery; however, these
robots have the tendency to take away some of the control that surgeons would prefer to
maintain.
As the technology and the knowledge of how to program robots increases and improves,
robots performing surgeries will have greater accuracy and stability and will also cut down on
the mistakes that can occur when a human surgeon is operating on a patient. For example,
during a surgery, a surgeon has to constantly stand over a patient and carefully operate with
precision. Although surgeons are trained to be very precise and usually have a considerable
amount of experience due to internships and previous surgeries, it is an inescapable fact that the
human body strains and tires therefore keeping the surgeon from being as precise in his work as
he would before the excessive use of energy. Because of the exhaustion from standing over a
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patient for countless hours working to complete the operation, the surgeon will grow tired and
will be prone to more mistakes such as involuntary twitching and lack of focus; however, using a
robot could change all of that. When using a surgical robot, there will be less strain on the
human body and human mistakes that are the result of continuous stress on the body will become
a problem of the past and will be thrown out of the picture because direct intervention from the
surgeon will not be necessary (howstuffworks.com). Using these robots will end unnecessary
injury to the patient, it will end the suffering of patients who have an infected abrasion or cut
from the surgeon’s lack of focus and control, and it will end the unnecessary deaths of patients
that could have lived if the surgeon had worked faster and was not worn down over the hours.
With these robots, the necessity for a doctor, nurse, or surgeon to be in the same room, or even
the same state as the patient, may become obsolete. The use of surgical robots will end the
potential danger of mistakes and will increase the safety of surgery.
In most dangerous surgeries, such as open-heart surgery, the patient is left in the hospital
for a long time in order to recover from the doctors and surgeons cutting the patient’s body open
to perform the planned operation.This illustration brings up the concept of minimally invasive
surgery for all surgical procedures. Minimally invasive surgery is, and has been a broad topic
even before the creation of surgical robots (biomed.brown.edu). This concept is referring to the
avoidance of long incisions and instead using small incisions and long devices to operate and
navigate through the tissue in the body (biomed.brown.edu). With robotic surgery, there will be
no need for invasive surgeries, meaning the surgery will not be causing as much damage. For
instance, when performing open-heart surgeries, surgeons must make an incision just below the
rib cage. The surgeons then proceed to work his or her way through to the heart, making more
incisions along the way, some bigger than the first. To stop the bleeding, the surgeonsometimes
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will have to burn the veins closed, which could result in major scarring and pain. Then the
surgeons and doctors proceed to stitch the incisions. When the patient wakes up, they most
likelywill be in extreme pain, even with the use of painkillers.The practice of surgical robots
would lessen the recovery time of the patient for serious procedures and provide a surgery that is
less invasive than the standard procedures used (biomed.brown.edu). This means patients that
need and require surgery would recover faster. The pain from incisions and possible removal of
an internal organ, such as gall bladder or an appendix, would be decreased exponentially. With
the shortened recovery time, the patients would be able to check out of the hospital earlier than
normal and would be able to get on with their every day lives. Surgical robots could mean the
end of excessive and needless pain and would decrease the requirement of a long recovery.
Surgical robotics, although created back in the 1990’s, are seen as a new and unknown
concept. Most people believe that having surgery performed by robots means that the robots
performing the surgery, execute the surgery autonomously, meaning that the robot itself is either
programmed according to the patient’s specific case or the robot is partially or fully self aware
and performs the surgery based on its knowledge on how to complete the patients operation type.
A common misconception that many doctors, surgeons, and medical workers have, and that
many people agree with, is that these surgical robots have the ability to take control away from
the surgeon preventing the doctor or surgeon from controlling the operation (wired.com). For
example, as technology increases, the autonomous consciousness of the robots will also
increase(wired.com). If this becomes a reality, the robots may be able to control every technical
and physical aspect of the surgery; however, the robots may be unable to sense any dangerous
problems that they are causing or problem that arise spontaneously, such as excessive bleeding
and lowered vital signs. If a human surgeon was performing the operation, he or she would
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notice these problem and address the problem immediately, attempting to fix the situation;
however, if a robot was performing the surgery, it may not read the problem or it may not
register the abnormality as a threat to the patient, resulting in the death of the patient from the
unintentional ignorance of the robot. From a financial standpoint, surgical robots may increase
the number of lawsuits a hospital receives and the robots may become more of a liability than an
asset. In the end, although there may be many benefits thatsurgical robots can provide to the
surgical profession, it would be best if the surgeons obtained and kept complete control of an
operation rather than therobots, which may make the robots become an unnecessary object that
people fear rather than appreciate.
Surgical robots have many benefits, some more beneficial than others, but all equally
important. They have the ability to be one of the most stable and safe operating tools known in
the medical field, they are able to perform surgeries that consist of a 1cm incision and further
operations, still minimally invasive, which allows the patient to wake up in less pain than
standard surgery, or even pain free causing the patient to recover quickly. All these benefits
would change the nature of every surgery performed when these robots are installed in the
hospitals; however, these types of robots also have their downsides, the worst being that as these
robots become more technologically advanced, they will become more “conscious” and will take
away most of the control from the surgeons, which may have potentially fatal results. Even
though these robots have both their assets and liabilities, we can still count on them to get the job
done, with and sometimes without a surgeon controlling the robot. The future may hold
exponential increases in this type of technology, and we can expect that as these become more
advanced, we will be seeing more of these surgical devices resulting in robots that are able to
