Problem 1: Damage to healthy organs
One patient in the United Kingdom was nearly killed when the robot that operated on him made a mistake. The patient, who had prostate cancer, needed to undergo a minimally invasive surgery to remove his prostate, and it was the robot that operated on him. As a result, the robot damaged his intestines during the surgery, leading to a severe infection, and the patient suffered organ failure and cardiac arrest. He spent more than two months in the intensive care unit. It took several more months of rehabilitation before he fully recovered and is now pursuing a claim against the hospital.
The man is not "alone in his battle," as U.S.-based Da Vinci Surgical Robotics is now facing 26 such disputes, with patients suing the company for punctured blood vessels or organs, severe intestinal damage, and sepsis and life-threatening injuries.
Not a few lives have been lost to robotic errors either, with a Chicago man dying in 2007 after undergoing a spleen removal procedure done by a robot, and another woman dying in 2012 from blood loss after a robot inadvertently punctured a blood vessel while she was undergoing a hysterectomy.
Problem #2: Electrocution of patients
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a medical device company called Intuition has encountered 500 problems since January of last year, including one in which an electric current that was supposed to be sent to a surgical robot was instead sent to a patient.
Sina Wilson, 45, of New Jersey, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Intuition for leaking electricity from a robot that operated on her when it "jumped" from the robot's arm to a device on her body. The electrical current "jumped" from the robot's arm to the equipment on her body, causing her to receive an electric shock that resulted in serious injuries, chronic abdominal pain and severe intestinal problems after the surgery.
Problem 3: The results are no better than human
Analysts say that while the problem lies with the robots, the deeper reason may be that the surgeons responsible for operating the robots for the surgeries are not skilled enough, and that they have not been trained enough to operate the robots properly.
Some experts also say that even if surgeons are skilled enough to operate the robots, using them to do the surgeries is not necessarily better than doing them with people. A statistic compiled last month showed that among 16,000 women who had hysterectomies, the percentage of patients who had complications from robotic surgery was no lower than the percentage of patients who had hand-operated by a surgeon.