Hospitals Misleading Patients About Benefits of Robotic Surgery, Study Suggests

John Hopkins Medicine
May 18, 2011

An estimated four in 10 hospital websites in the United States publicize the use of robotic surgery, with the lion’s share touting its clinical superiority despite a lack of scientific evidence that robotic surgery is any better than conventional operations, a new Johns Hopkins study finds.

The promotional materials, researchers report online in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, overestimate the benefits of surgical robots, largely ignore the risks and are strongly influenced by the product’s manufacturer.

“The public regards a hospital’s official website as an authoritative source of medical information in the voice of a physician,” says Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s leader. “But in this case, hospitals have outsourced patient education content to the device manufacturer, allowing industry to make claims that are unsubstantiated by the literature. It’s dishonest and it’s misleading.”
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