Doctors couldn’t operate on my tumour, but this robot did — and it may have saved my life::Glenn Deir has special thanks for the robot who operated on his tonsil cancer.
How insulting.
“It” didn’t save your life. The doctors did.
This, this times 100.
I don’t know whether author has misunderstood what the Da Vinci is or whether he is intentionally misinforming his readers. From the way the article is written, one might have gotten an impression that it is the robot doing the surgery by itself. Which is total nonsense, of course.
Da Vinci is a system controlled by a surgeon-a human being- at the console. It allows procedures that would be otherwise difficult or more invasive, due to its three robotic arms being smaller size than human hands. Additionally, it eliminates tremor of real human hands, and the console itself has a sort of “pseudo-3D” screen, which grats depth perception compared to, say, laparoscopic surgical screens.
It’s been incredible tool in treatment many areas of human surgery, notably prostate cancer surgery and hysterectomy, among others. And it takes an experienced surgeon to operate it.
Da Vinci’s “fingers” can go where the human hand cannot. The surgery is less invasive, the complications fewer, the recovery quicker. But da Vinci is not R2-D2. It does not act autonomously. It does what its master directs, and in my case its master was Dr. Martin Corsten. He sits behind a console controlling da Vinci’s arms while peering through high-definition cameras.
…
When I asked Dr. Corsten what the surgery would have looked like without da Vinci he replied, “In the good old days, we would have cut your jaw in two.” That’s how they got their access. The image of my jaw being split like a turkey wishbone was deeply unsettling. Radiation treatment has made even a simple tooth extraction impossible. The jaw won’t heal properly. Without da Vinci, I had no surgical option.
I have thanked all my doctors profusely. But I reserve a special thank you for da Vinci.
The article is EXTREMELY clear about what Da Vinci is and why he’s grateful to it. It’s your comment that’s total nonsense
The headline is incredibly misleading. “Doctors couldn’t operate on my tumor” is patently false when a doctor DID operate on the tumor USING the robot. It’s deliberately stealing credit from the doctor and giving it to their tool. It’s the headline that’s nonsensical.
I agree. But at this point in time I’m judging anybody who hasn’t yet learned to ignore the headline and read the article
Fair enough. But it’s still valuable to express annoyance at the headline itself, which is problematic as hell.
Clickbait title aside, the article expresses gratitude to both the doctor AND the advance of technology.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sixteen years ago, I contracted cancer in the left tonsil thanks to the human papillomavirus.
Given removing the cancer involved delicate cutting of the tonsil, tongue and throat, Dr. Lee offered to refer me to a surgeon in Halifax who used a robot named da Vinci.
He sits behind a console controlling da Vinci’s arms while peering through high-definition cameras.
The previous radiation had made the tonsil stiff; it didn’t pull away easily.
I woke up with a feeding tube up my nose and an incision that ran the full length of my neck.
When I asked Dr. Corsten what the surgery would have looked like without da Vinci he replied, “In the good old days, we would have cut your jaw in two.”
The original article contains 1,072 words, the summary contains 119 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
