A stray electrical arc from a surgical robot burned a Florida woman’s small intestine during a colon cancer procedure and the error caused her death, a federal lawsuit is alleging.
The suit, filed by Delray Beach, Florida, resident Harvey Sultzer in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, claims that Intuitive Surgical Inc. failed to warn his wife, Sandra Sultzer, of issues that would have caused her to forego use of the company’s da Vinci surgical robot for her procedure in September 2021.
The company also failed to safely design its product “so that stray electrical energy would not burn the insides of patients without the knowledge or control of the operating surgeons,” and failed to properly train surgeons how to use the device, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit notes that the da Vinci robot is a multi-armed surgical device, introduced in 1999, that’s controlled remotely by surgeons with help of an onboard camera. The instruments include forceps, scissors, scalpels and other surgical tools.
Intuitve Surgical did not immediately respond to an email sent to its corporate communications department seeking comment about the lawsuit. Because the lawsuit was filed on Tuesday, no defense attorney is listed.
The company’s financial reports, filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission, mention an undisclosed number of pending lawsuits and state that the company disputes the allegations.
The Sultzer lawsuit alleges Intuitive Surgical sells the instruments to hospitals that have no experience in robotic surgery but relies on the company to train its surgeons how to use them.
Most of the instruments that the robot uses are disposable or can only be used for a limited number of procedures before they have to be replaced, the suit says. As a result, the company relies on volume of surgeries to make much of its income, it says.
When Sandra Sultzer underwent surgery to treat her colon cancer at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital, she experienced…
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