[Correspondence] Adoption of robotic surgery: driven by market competition or a desire to improve patient care?

Ajay Aggarwal and colleagues1 should be commended for conducting a methodologically rigorous study on the effect of hospital competition and patient choice on the landscape of cancer surgery centres. Their finding that established robotic centres were more likely to be in competitive markets and to have experienced a net gain of patients is certainly thought-provoking. However, we disagree with their assertion that these outcomes were driven largely by competition in the absence of evidence of improved quality of care conferred by robotic surgery.

Source: The Lancet Oncology - February 1, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Sean A Fletcher, Alexander P Cole, Sebastian Berg, Daniel Pucheril, Quoc-Dien Trinh Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research