Robotic surgery risks, harms rise with marketing

Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver announced last year that Warren Kortz, a general surgeon on the medical staff, was the first in the Rocky Mountain region to use a technique known as robotic surgery to remove gall bladders through one incision in the belly button. The operation, performed while the doctor sits at a video-game-like console, was "taking advantage of another breakthrough in robotic surgery" and is "easier on the patient," the hospital said in a press release. "It's Star Wars stuff," Kortz was quoted as saying in another article put out by the hospital touting another operation, robot-assisted parathyroid surgery, in 2010. "My prediction is it will eventually replace everything else."