U.S. has seen widespread adoption of robot-assisted cancer surgery to remove the prostate
In 2001, surgeons began using robotic technologies in operations to remove the prostate. To examine trends in the use of such robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) procedures for prostate cancer patients, Steven Chang, MD, MS, of Harvard Medical School, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, led a team that analyzed 489,369 men who underwent non-RARP (i.e., open or laparoscopic radical prostatectomy) or RARP in the United States from 2003 to 2010. During the study period, RARP adoption (defined as performing more than 50 percent of annual radical prostatectomies with the robotic approach) increased from 0.7 percent to 42 percent of surgeons performing radical prostatectomies. Surgeons who performed at least 25 radical prostatectomies each year were more likely to adopt RARP…