So let me preface that I’m not writing a Scientific paper here - so don’t hold me to the references and all that stuff. This is a blog post to stimulate some mental debate in our community.
If an academic wants to re-write this with deep citations etc - go for it.
Instead I’m going to talk about macro trends - because for me that is how the world works and becomes the best guesstimates of what happens in the real world. Individual data points (no matter how strong they are) can lead to a false viewpoint.
Firstly I’m going to show a series of graphs on the impact of RAS on both open and laparoscopic surgery:
You can go google these with the complete references - they are from a bunch of specialties - mainly USA some are quite old - some are a bit newer. But they all show the same trend.
When robots come into a hospital... both open surgery and laparoscopic surgery convert to robotic. Pay attention to manual laparoscopy...