Around half of all major surgery in some countries is now done with robots. The US, UK, and India are among the leading proponents, but many other countries, too, are reporting statistics that would indicate that a significant proportion of surgical procedures is now robotics-assisted.

Harvard Medical School conducted a study in the US of around 500,000 cancer patients between the years of 2003 and 2010, and found that the number of surgical procedures that were robotic-assisted went from 0.7 per cent to 50 per cent over those years.

It also found that the use of robot-assisted surgery was more common among surgeons at teaching hospitals and at intermediate and large-sized hospitals, as well as at urban hospitals.

The Harvard team calculated that robot-assisted surgery increased the overall cost to the hospital, contributing to a 40 per cent increases in annual expenditures.

Dr Steven Chang, who led the study, said: “Our findings give insights on the adoption of not just robotic technology but future surgical innovations in terms of the general pattern of early diffusion, the potential impact on costs of new and competing treatments, and the alternations in practices patterns such as centralization of care to higher volume providers.”

In the UK, parts of the National Health Service (NHS) have been introducing robots into surgery over the past few years. In a study by NHS England found that robotics were used to assist surgeons in 49 to 50 per cent of the time in some types of cancer cases, such as prostate cancer. The report said it found no difference in the “operative time”, or the duration of the operation itself, “but patients having a robot-assisted procedure had shorter length of admissions”.

This is a view that is echoed by other medical professionals, such as Dr Vanita Ahuja, of the York Hospital in Pennsylvania, who produced a report partly based on a nationwide database from 2008 to 2011, and found that robotic-assisted cardiac surgery increased by 600 per cent over the four-year period.

“Robotic-assisted cardiac surgery has lower length of stay than non-robotic surgery,” Dr Ahuja said, adding: “Results of this study suggest robotic-assisted cardiac surgery may be as safe as non-robotic surgery and offer the surgeon an additional technique for performing cardiac surgery.”

In India, too, surgeons are coming to similar conclusions. Dr N. P. Gupta, chairman of Medanta Kidney and Urology Institute, is claimed to have been the the first to use the robot-assisted surgical technology for radical prostatectomy in India. In an interview with The Times of India, Dr Gupta said “patients can go home in two to three days after the surgery”, partly because robots made clear and accurate, which allows suturing to suturing to be with minimum amount of damage to surrounding tissues.

Orthopedic surgery robots use the 3D imaging technology and computer navigation techniques to improve ability of surgeons to place implants with precise alignment. Many studies have shown that these techniques are safer and more effective as compared to traditional surgical techniques. David Bortel, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at MidMichigan Medical Center at Midland, says: “In reality, patients are reporting comparable mobility, functionality and quality of life”.

Though emerging technology does not guarantee better results, robotics has always been effective in hip and knee replacement surgeries. Improvements in technology and new methods of verification for implant sizing and placement are significant for patients and surgeons.