Is Robotic Surgery Safe? 3 Things That Should Make You Think Twice About Having It
Is your doctor pushing you to get a surgical procedure using robotic surgery? While robotic surgery is one of the newest surgical techniques out there, and doctors seem eager to use it, that doesn't mean you should automatically agree to jump on the bandwagon. Robotic surgery is still very new, and the kinks are being worked out even now. Do you want to be a human guinea pig for their practice sessions? That is essentially what you will be if you agree to it. Personal injury lawyers are seeing an increase in robotic surgery malpractice cases. If you decide to go through with this supposedly minimally invasive procedure, you should have a personal injury lawyer on call, just in case.
Here are three of the main things that can go wrong with robotic surgery.
1. Doctors Make Mistakes Due to Inexperience
Because robotic surgery is still a new thing, many physicians are only just now incorporating it into their practices. According to HealthBeatBlog.com, sing the robotic tools requires extensive training for both doctors and their assistants. They have to use it in a laboratory setting, and then work their way up to using it on humans.
However, using a new tool on a human is far different from clinical practice. If a doctor is very new at using surgical robots, that doctor is more prone to make mistakes when using them. Those mistakes can lead to patient injuries, and a call to the doctor from a personal injury lawyer.
If you want to minimize your risk of being injured by a doctor's mistake, make sure you are not among the doctor's first 100 patients or so robotic surgery patients. Give your doctor time to get experienced before agreeing to this type of procedure.
2. The Robot Could Malfunction
Just because something is a machine that is billed to be very precise doesn't mean that it can't malfunction. Robotic surgery machines can, and in fact often do, have glitches. These glitches can cause serious injuries to patients.
Electric sparks have been known to fly from the machines and cause burns to the patients they are operating on, for example. It is also possible that the controls of the machine could malfunction and cause the doctor using them to lose control of the procedure, possibly cutting, cauterizing, or removing things that should not be touched. This is a big reason for many of the robotic surgery malpractice lawsuits personal injury attorneys are now seeing.
3. The Technology is Imprecise
The technology is new and has not yet been proven to be ore effective than traditional types of surgery. The rush to get it to market and encourage doctors to use it has meant that many of the kinks inherent in the programming and manufacturing of the robotic surgery instruments is still technically in the experimental phase.
Parts can come off during surgery, leading to injury.. Programming errors can cause mistakes to be made. There is a reason why makers of the most popular robotic surgery machine are facing more than 2 dozen lawsuits in the United States right now. The technology has simply been deployed before it was fully tested and ready, and patients are bearing the consequences of that move.
Conclusion
Getting a second opinion before undergoing robotic surgery is an excellent idea. You may even want to look for a surgeon that will perform your operation the traditional way. Don't let any doctor force you to be a human experiment with this new surgical method. If you have had it and were injured, or are injured by it in the future, do not hesitate to contact a personal injury lawyer from a firm like Otorowski Johnston Morrow & Golden P.L.L.C.