ARE you ready to replace your surgeon with a robot? At least one Jamaican doctor has stated that a few of his patients have opted for robotic surgery offered in North America because of the intense marketing offered by such facilities. Given that robotic surgery has only been on the market since 2009, not enough surgeons have practised with them. After surgery a few patients return to facilities like the Tony Thwaites Wing to recover from operations done overseas.

Dr William Aiken, a urologist attached to the Tony Thwaites Wing, states: “We lose a lot of patients each year to North America because they want a robotic procedure. It is absolutely for the hype and the demand locally for robotic surgery is very, very high. Although there are a lot of downsides, these are not highlighted in the medical marketing brochures. However, if you watch TV you will notice that there are lawyers asking, ‘have you had a robotic procedure’ because we know that there are complications from the robotics.

According to research, Jamaicans who travel abroad for this type of surgery can choose from remote surgery, minimally invasive surgery and unmanned surgery. The attraction to robotic use is that the surgery is done with precision, miniaturisation, smaller incisions, decreased blood loss, less pain, and quicker healing time.

However, Dr Aiken notes: “What is interesting though is that sometimes those patients come back with worse outcomes than if they had stayed and so it’s not about getting a robotic procedure, it’s about who does it; and so I tell my patients if you’re going abroad to get a robotic operation, go to a surgeon who has done a lot of these types of procedures.”

Given that there is the demand for robotic surgery in Jamaica, why hasn’t the medical community met the demand?

“I was looking at an article of research recently. A surgical robot costs US$2 million and the maintenance and disposable costs are quite alarmingly high,” Dr Aiken explains. “You have to do at least 300 procedures a year just for it to be economically viable and then that doesn’t factor in the maintenance and the upkeep and having an engineer available; and so you have to wonder, is this the way that Jamaica should go?”

What Jamaican surgeons have focused on is minimally invasive techniques done by humans, which reduce the recovery time.

“I have witnessed that shift first-hand over the last 20 years,” Dr Aiken states. “For example, most patients with kidney stones, say 20 years ago, were treated via an open procedure; nowadays I would say the vast majority of Jamaican patients or certainly patients accessing the urology clinic at the tertiary institutions would be able to have a minimum invasive technique.”

Robotic surgery is used to treat many types of abdominal conditions and colon and rectal conditions, including gallbladder cancer, colon cancer; liver cancer; pancreatic disorders, and rectal cancer.

According to the United States- based Mayo Clinic, “Because robotic arms are more flexible than standard laparoscopic tools and allow greater precision and better access to difficult areas, Mayo Clinic surgeons often may spare delicate nerves and prevent damage to nerves and tissues”.