EFN

A new study suggests a hi-tech minimally invasive prostate surgery certainly has some advantages over traditional surgery; however, it also has more risks.

According to the report’s lead author, Dr. Jim Hu, a urologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, less-invasive prostatectomies are preferred to the traditional open surgery as they are more accurate in removing the prostate, has less recovery time, and fewer complications; they notably increase the risk of losing function and urine control.

The report appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The research team examined Medicare information for almost 9,000 prostate cancer patients who had surgical treatment. Of those, about 2,000 patients had minimally invasive surgery and nearly 7,000 had standard surgery.

“There has been rapid adoption of minimally invasive radical prostatectomy; however, outcomes have not been superior,” said Dr. Jim C. Hu of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the lead author of the paper. He said hospital marketing departments might have oversold the technology.

“I think that is certainly the story I would tell based on our findings,” Hu said. “In our healthcare system, perhaps a lot of community hospitals felt the need to be competitive . . . and they acquired these robots and marketed them before there has been diffusion of experience among surgeons.”

It was discovered that patients who had the Laparoscopic or keyhole surgeries were able the hospital within two to three days, on average, including having lower rat of blood transfusions, breathing problems and internal scarring. The study also found that people from higher-income areas were more likely to undergo the minimally invasive procedure. That growth has been fueled by “widespread direct-to-consumer advertising,” according to the report.