r/oddlysatisfying • u/ShallowAstronaut • 4d ago

Performing surgery on a grape to demonstrate the precision of the machine

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u/Radiant_Actuary7325 4d ago

This is called the davinci robot. It is produced in a way where it has required yet avoidable service intervals due to an intentional design flaw that renders a circuitry component useless. This was done intentionally to increase manufacturer revenue. A very scummy thing to do. My dad owned a third party surgical equipment repair sales company. This was a target product to bring in but the lawsuits between his repair facility and the manufacturer were going on and on.

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u/zarya-zarnitsa 4d ago

Wait what.

We have one in our hospital, and it's the one that is working. We have a HUGO too and it causes even more problems.

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u/Radiant_Actuary7325 4d ago

They may have adjusted things since all that drama around a decade ago to appease customers. I'm pretty sure their patent expired. My dad got out of that business around 2013 if I remember correctly so who knows now. I just remember using one when I was in college and visited a repair facility, and being told that was a future market. This is all old news so no worries talking about it now.

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u/GeneralAppendage 3d ago

Why are you pressure washing and not sleeving

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u/Drag0nz_Wrath13 4d ago

Having been apart of budget and fiscal meetings for hospitals, I know that on average each arm of the robot costs approx $150k. They are replaced it felt like weekly (several arms had different functions and were swapped out) and the biggest perpetrator was actually the cleaning/sterilization process. These arms are so delicate that the pressure washing process they go through would break them often.

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u/Abundance144 4d ago

Each arm has a certain number of uses regardless of how it's sterilized. If you ever get a chance to open one of these up you'll see very fine wires and machinery that cannot hold up to continuous use. Whether that's by design or simply a limitation our current level of product and materials, I do not know.

Imagine having a car with an axel that's the thickness of a sharpie. The car will run, and the manufacturer will offer you a five mile warranty. But in the case of the robot, the "axel" is that thickness due to the necessity of the size of the cavity that it's designed to work in.

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u/Radiant_Actuary7325 4d ago

That's a new one. Sounds like a pain to deal with.

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u/Aleraen4311 4d ago

The parent company also fought regulators to decrease the amount of required training to recommend hospitals, as the actual length of training required to safely operate the robot was considered to be prohibitive. As a result, there are a significant number of cases of badly botched surgeries resulting from these machines.

'The Bleeding Edge' on Netflix talks about it and other potentially dangerous medical devices.

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u/Rowlandum 3d ago

I've had the chance to play with one of these. I'm not a surgeon. They are really easy to pick up and just use. The screen has great depth perception, the instruments feel like your own hands as you operate them. I tried the same simulation with conventional methods and it was no where near as easy, hell easy wouldn't even be the right word to use

Moral of the story, don't make judgements based on popular media

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u/Radiant_Actuary7325 4d ago

Honestly, they are super easy to use lol. I could fold origami with it within a minute. It's super intuitive

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u/--Anonymus-- 3d ago

And the cost of a surgery with the davinci is much higher than without. My dad once told me (he is a surgeon) that simple prostate surgeries with the davinci cost twice as much as doing them per Hand. Because the instruments and stuff are so expensive

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u/RefinedAnalPalate 2d ago

But they are also reimbursed more. So there’s evil at all levels

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u/--Anonymus-- 2d ago

Yep. I will never let a surgeon use that thing on me

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u/DarianStardust 4d ago

I "love" capitalism 🙃

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u/Radiant_Actuary7325 4d ago

Not the best things going on when everyone is trying to make profit off of each other's children

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u/KellyAnn3106 4d ago

I've had two surgeries with the DaVinci robots and they both went super well. It's disappointing to hear the manufacturer is scummy.

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u/Radiant_Actuary7325 4d ago

It's capitalism. Truly awesome idea and machine but that bottom line... Gotta get that profit