New prostate surgery not necessarily better: study

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-14 07:44

He said the current study used Medicare billing data, which does not distinguish between robot-assisted and other types of minimally invasive prostate surgery.

"Looking at the data, you cannot accurately assess which patients were operated on robotically," he said.

Dr. Herbert Lepor of New York University's Langone Medical Center analyzed several studies on robotic-assisted prostate surgery in a paper published this year in Reviews in Urology. He said so far the evidence does not suggest the robotic procedure is superior to open surgery.

Lepor, who was not involved in the study, estimates that about 80 percent of minimally invasive prostate cancer surgery is done robotically. "What drives this is the industry creating the need," he said.

"We've increased the cost of care with the robot," he said. "Now what we are learning is continence and potency seem to be inferior."

Shares of Intuitive Surgical closed $4.36, or 1.72 percent, lower at $249.64 on Tuesday on Nasdaq.

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