An American woman died after a surgical Robot burned a hole in her intestine during a colon cancer operation.
Sandra
Sultzer, 78, from Boca Raton, died in 2022 following a procedure to treat her
colon cancer the previous year, which was performed using a 'da Vinci' robot, a
lawsuit filed by her husband claims
The four-armed
machine is activated by a doctor who operates a camera and a surgeon who
manipulates the robot’s arms from a console using a joystick and foot pedals.
But the
lawsuit alleges that a fault allowed stray electrical energy emanating from the
robotic arms used to cut body tissue and burn her internal organs without the
surgical team’s knowledge.
The lawsuit
added that this is not the first time that da Vinci robots have caused undue
harm, saying that the company behind the device, Intuitive Surgical Inc., ‘has
also received thousands of injury and defect reports’.
Sandra Sultzer
went into surgery at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital in September 2021
to treat her colon cancer.
Surgeons there
were using the da Vinci surgical robot, a freestanding cart equipped with four
arms.
One arm holds
a camera or laparoscope, and the surgeon operates the other three ‘hands’ by
putting their fingers into small sets of loops behind a console.
Each arm is
outfitted with forceps, scissors, scalpels, and other surgical tools, and can
cut incisions about the size of a dime.
The precise
movements typically result in less blood loss and trauma to the surgical site
than would an open surgery with a larger cut.
The arms are
wrapped with little rubber sleeves to prevent electricity from leaking to areas
of the body outside of the very precise surgical site, but the lawsuit alleges
that the sleeves had cracks in them that allowed electrical currents to escape.
This is what
caused a hole to be burned into Mrs Sultzer’s small intestine,, the lawsuit
alleges.
The burn as a
result of electricity radiating out, known as arcing, happened outside of the
doctor’s field of vision, so it went unnoticed.
A hole in the
small intestine releases digestive enzymes and bile which can lead to
infection. If that infection spreads, the person can go into septic shock.
The lawsuit
said: ‘Had ISI safely designed its product so that stray electrical energy would
not burn the insides of patients without the knowledge or control of the
operating surgeons, the small intestine injury to Mrs Sultzer would not have
happened, and she would not have died.’
In addition,
the lawsuit said that the company failed to adequately train doctors in how to
effectively use the device, raising the odds of a potentially fatal error
during surgery.
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