Federico Gheza, MD, Alberto Mangano, MD, Mario A Masrur, MD, Pier C Giulianotti, MD, FACS. UIC
Introduction: A general misperception of the real concept of robotic surgery seems to be revealed in our clinical practice. Despite its introduction almost years ago, robotic surgery is still related to many myths and beliefs. Before designing a trial to see if these false awareness could impact on outcome, we measured this misperception by a survey. Moreover we tested if medical school is able today to give to the future doctors a necessary knowledge about robotic surgery. With the same survey we explore the feelings about the introduction of the Artificial Intelligence in medicine and the perception of the consequences of a larger use of technology in medicine.
Methods and procedures: a multiple choice survey was designed and anonymously administered via the platform SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com). A total of 55 questions were selected from the research team and included in the survey. The questionnaire was divided in three parts: the first was to get information on participants’ population; the second asked specific questions about robotic surgery; the third focused on technology use in medical education.
Results: we received and analyzed 81 questionnaires, 70 of which totally filled. Many undergraduates consider robotic surgery as “experimental”, will prefer open surgery on themselves and see a risk for robotic surgery in damaging the patient-surgeon relationship. This situation is better for medical students, but still a great diffidence were encountered. 25% of UG consider robotic surgery as “experimental” vs only 2.7% of MS (Q22). Most thought robotic surgery had been used for only 10 years or less (Q23). 12.12% of UG and 32.43% of MS gave the right answer (p=.03). Almost 66% of UG see robotic surgery as a risk in damaging the patient-surgeon relationship. This is not seen among MS (Q29) (p=.007). 40% of UG are fearful of robots used to operate them. This fear is significantly reduced among medical students (p=.05). UG were less familiar with the indications and uses for robotics. MS gave a correct response more frequently (Q31, 15.15% vs 37.84%, p=0.04).
Conclusions: our results indicates that nowadays, the robotic surgery is related a lot of misperceptions and a generally low level of information. This general picture is partially mitigated during the medical school, but the level of knowledge is still low. A big effort seems mandatory in clarify every technical aspect and an ethic debate about robotics, technology and AI as part of medical curriculum is advisable.
Presented at the SAGES 2017 Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.
Abstract ID: 88472
Program Number: P332
Presentation Session: iPoster Session (Non CME)
Presentation Type: Poster