NHS to use robots on obese patients during surgery as it’s safest way to operate on them
THE NHS will use surgical robots to get more fat Brits on the operating table because machines can work on people who are too high-risk for manual procedures.
They use smaller instruments and enter through smaller incisions, and can be faster so patients do not need as much anaesthetic.
Robotics is one of the Government’s “five big bets” on technology that will revolutionise the NHS.
Ministers’ 10-Year Plan for the health service, launched last week, said it will “expand surgical robot adoption”.
NHS watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has encouraged hospitals to invest more in surgical robots and use them more widely.
A recent report by NHS England added: “Robot-assisted surgery may improve access to surgery for people who are at higher risk, including people with a high body mass index.”
Body mass index is a height-to-weight ratio, with any number higher than 30 classed as obese.
About three in 10 adults in England are obese and this puts them at higher risk during operations and may even mean they can’t have them.
Bulky fat means it takes longer to conduct super-precise surgery and large patients need more anaesthetic and lose more blood.
Top prostate surgeon Ben Challacombe, who works at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in London, said: “Operating on obese patients is highly complex and more tricky.
“When you’re obese you’re much more likely to get an infection or to have breathing difficulties because your lungs are being squashed by other tissues.
“Robotic assistance means we can do more.
“We can do robotic surgery on much bigger patients than we could with traditional keyhole surgery.”
Jeffrey Ahmed, a gynaecological surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust, said: “Some patients are too obese to have an operation, because to do a big open operation on someone whose BMI is 65 subjects them to too much risk.
“The minimally invasive approach that we can do on the robot opens up the possibility of doing that kind of care for patients.
“I think it will be used more in the future.
“If you can’t physically do an operation for a patient without a robot, then that’s going to be the way to do it.
“You can’t just not offer the patient surgery because you don’t have access to a robot.”
Robot-assisted surgery relies on qualified surgeons controlling the £1m machines with the usual medical team around the patient.
There are about 140 machines in use in England and their use has rocketed from 35,000 operations in 2022 to 70,000 in 2024.
Dr Chris Smith-Brown, from the Private Healthcare Information Network, added: “We know that losing weight is not always possible.
“There is hope that obesity won’t have to be a barrier to life-changing surgery.”
