Robot doctors do surgery, safe and reliable?

Recently, the U.S. MIT Technology Review website reported a report on robotic surgery injuries, which was published in the world's largest preprint arXiv. A group of researchers from Rush University School of Medicine, the University of Illinois and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2000 to December 2013 recorded robotic medical accidents investigated found that during this 14-year period, robotic medical accidents*** occurred 10,624, of which 8,061 times the robot failed to function that accounted for 75.9% of the total, 1,391 cases in which patients were secondarily harmed by the robot during surgery, and the final disturbing figure is that approximately 144 robotic medical errors directly or indirectly resulted in patient deaths, which, although only 1.4% of the total number of medical errors, is clearly difficult to appease patients who are increasingly demanding of surgical safety. With the volume of robotic surgery increasing by leaps and bounds, there is a clear need to design an intelligent robotic surgeon that is safer and more reliable. Between 2007 and 2013 alone, more than 17 million patients experienced robotic surgery in the United States. Typically, these robots perform a number of minimally invasive surgery (Minimally Invasive Surgery) procedures ranging from simple gynecological and urological surgeries to more complex ones such as colon cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neck surgeries.

So, is the da Vinci robotic system we mentioned above safe and reliable? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has likewise compiled statistics, and according to the data, in 2013 alone, the FDA received more than 3,600 adverse reports of da Vinci robotic surgeries, more than the previous two years combined. In fact, these figures do not include those incidents that have not yet been disclosed, and if these figures were added, the number of medical incidents could be several times higher than it is now. The safety risks of robotic surgery are thus becoming more pronounced.

The risks associated with robotic surgery are mainly manifested in the following aspects. For example, during surgery, medical devices can suddenly fall, machines can be damaged, parts can be detached, burned, or fall into the patient's body, and sometimes robots can release electric arcs, which can be fatal to patients. In addition, robots can suffer from system as well as imaging malfunctions, and once they make it difficult for the attending physician to tell the difference, medical errors begin to occur.

But you'd be wrong to think that robots are dangerous when it comes to surgery. In addition to the need to face up to the safety risks posed by robotic doctors, they have a lot of advantages in a number of ways, which is why they're more popular. For example, they can push the physical limits of the average doctor, such as arm dexterity, blind spots in the field of vision, and muscle fatigue. Robot doctors can operate on patients without fatigue, which is probably not the case with human doctors, so they are superior in terms of surgical efficiency. In addition, it is also difficult for humans to overcome tremors during surgery, especially when fatigued, the muscle groups in the arm will involuntarily tremble, and for delicate surgeries, these subtle tremors can be the key to the success of the surgery. Robotic surgeons don't have these physical barriers and can therefore perform surgery with great precision.

History of the robotic surgeon

That said, perhaps the reason why robotic surgeons have had so many problems is that the history of the development of robotic surgical systems is too short, and there are still many problems that have not yet been solved. 1983, the world's first robotic surgeon, Arthrobot, was born in Vancouver, and in the beginning it was used to operate in plastic surgery, and then later In those days, robots were still a novelty. In those days, robots were still a novelty, and National Geographic made a documentary about them. But it was the famous American director Spielberg's 2001 movie Artificial Intelligence that really familiarized the general public with robots. It brought a wave of artificial intelligence to the world, except in the field of medicine, where the wave has long been blowing.

Once the Arthrobot robot was introduced, the rest of the world was scrambling to develop their own robotic doctors, with Imperial College London in the UK, IBM in the US, and even NASA taking part in the development of the robot doctor.

In 2006, the world's first truly intelligent robotic doctor was introduced, and it successfully operated on a 34-year-old patient with arrhythmia. It outperformed the average surgeon because it already had 10,000 such surgeries in its "head". But among the intelligent robotic surgical systems, the da Vinci robotic system is quite popular, which was developed by Intuitive Surgical, a U.S. medical device company, and in July 2000, it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for entry into the market. China also introduced its first da Vinci robot in 2006.

It's only been just over 20 years since the introduction of the robotic surgeon, and robotic surgeries can indeed bring us a number of benefits, as they are more precise and stable than those performed by ordinary surgeons, and lead to a lower rate of infection in patients during surgery. They also greatly reduce the work of doctors. But while we enjoy the convenience of robotic surgeons, we also need to see the safety risks of robotic surgeons, and we urgently need to redesign a more advanced and safer surgical robot. And in addition to this, is the need to reduce the cost of robotic surgery, the current tens of thousands of surgical fees so that many people look forward to.