Cyber ops that look like medieval torture

WHAT of the other advantage so often touted when robots take over jobs from humans: that they work quicker and more cheaply?

Evidence suggests this is not the case. Quite the opposite. In Professor David Jayne’s study on operations for rectal cancer, robot ops took on average 37.5 minutes more than human ones.

Studies on other types of robot surgery report similar demands for extra time in operating theatres. Why? While we might imagine that robo-ops involve patients lying on operating tables while teams of Cadbury’s Smash Martians get busy around them, that’s not how they work at all.

Robot- assisted surgery is convoluted. The patient must be positioned precisely in order for the robot arms to reach the desired organ and tissues and so perform the operation.

First, while lying on their backs under general anaesthetic, typically patients are strapped to the table with their feet hoisted up in stirrups. The table is then swung down backwards, so the patient is head- down at 45 degrees. Surgeons call this posture the ‘steep Trendelenburg’ — it looks like a medieval punishment. And this ‘precarious positioning’ demands significant extra work and care, according to a report published last November in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

The study, by doctors and anaesthetists at the Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College London, warned that patients left in this position for the time required for surgery — often up to four hours — can develop complications that include injuries to their cornea

and nerve damage in their hands and feet. These can be caused by unnatural pressures that result from being held in this position for prolonged periods, the researchers said.

They added that if doctors aren’t careful to monitor potential risks, the position may also cause dangerous build-up of fluid in the brain and lungs — which can cause post-operative confusion, reduced consciousness and damage to muscles — as well as blood clots that can lead to strokes.