FDA warns against robotic surgery for breast cancer, cervical cancer, & other women's cancers

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@FDA Report

Our surveillance using multiple tools—medical device reports, patient registries, scientific literature—helps us monitor and identify potential problems with medical devices as they arise. In the case of robotically-assisted surgical devices and cancer-related uses such as mastectomy, we are aware of scientific literature reporting that surgeons have been using the device for uses not granted marketing authorization by the FDA

It’s less “these are killing people!”
And more: “we haven’t been paid to review this!”

[Sqyntz]

I think the doctors in that picture forgot to invite their patient to the surgery.

[twistmeyer]

I’ve had surgery with the DaVinci, and can attest to the quick recovery and lower pain. Ended up only using ibuprofen during the recovery period for pain, and only needed a surgical drain for a couple of days after the procedure. Was recovered well enough to go to Burning Man within 6 weeks.

The issue with the DaVinci is that the surgeon doesn’t have the ability to feel tissue consistency, and so they tend to have a standard path they will take out, a bit more generous than they might otherwise, but with some risk of missing things like a small extracapsular extension of a tumor. What’s really needed is a more image-guided approach like is used in radiation therapy, but some cancers are fairly difficult to image with current tech, and there’s simply not space for both the surgical arms and imaging.

[ficuswhisperer]

After watching The Bleeding Edge on Netflix, I’m not surprised.

[gabe_oakes]

I think by the time that came up, I was numb to all the stupid in that film. Although it could be pointing to a truth about Charlize Theron. Well the character being played anyway.

[Stripes]

@RickMycroft

I just want a cheap 3D dental printer. How hard could that be?

Phrozen sells a 3D printer they claim is good for dental use (and many of the people on the forum seem to be dentists), the kickstarter was under $1000, I don’t know if that qualifies as cheap. I have the XL model (I’m not doing dental work with it, I’m not a dentist or doctor of any sort). The non-XL model costs even less.

It isn’t without problems (it is dog slow, the original generation’s UV LEDs don’t operate at the wavelength they expected so it can’t use as many resin liquids as they expected, an upgrade kit is available, but I haven’t installed dit so I can’t say how good it is (other claim it is fantastic), also the “slicer” runs on device only and while it is a version of CURA it appears to be closed source and locked down). On the other hand it is inexpensive for a resin 3D printer, and it has a Raspberry Pi running Octo Print already (albeit a locked down frozen in time version).

You probably also need to build a “curing bucket” (a Home Depot 5 Gal bucket and $30 of UV LEDs will do), and may want a “sonic cleaner” (they sell one well under $100 that has worked well for us both for this printer and other resin cleaning tasks we have had). So budget around $150 extra for those.

While this is far from an unqualified recommendation, it is the best inexpensive 3D resin printer I have every used (and I haven’t seen anything close in price). I highly recommend doing additional research, but if you want that sort of printer this ought to make the short list of ones to research.