Surgeons develop pain – with and without robots
During early summer 2019, postdoc Tina Dalager defended her PhD thesis on muscle and joint pain in surgeons – with and without the use of robots. Her research showed that surgeons experience pain because of their work – regardless of whether they work with robotic surgery or with traditional surgery.
Because surgery is often static work in awkward positions, the surgeons, according to Tina Dalager, must train for the rest of their working life in order to be able to keep up with the work as a surgeon. She predicts that most surgeons will become "office doctors" later in their working life, because the body says no to working as a surgeon. And it therefore makes no difference whether they use robot-assisted surgery or traditional binocular surgery. Tina Dalager predicts that the surgeons' pain may have financial consequences for the Danish healthcare system and calls for further investigations into it.
There is not yet much research into surgeons' working postures and the resulting muscle and joint pain – apart from Tina Dalager, there are only a few, including a research group in Minnesota, USA, who work with similar issues.
Read the article "Musculoskeletal pain among surgeons performing minimally invasive surgery: a systematic review" or the article "Surgery is physically demanding and associated with multisite musculoskeletal pain: a cross-sectional study from the thesis.
View Tina Dalager's research profile or visit her LinkedIn profile.