Costs partly determine organizational robotics, but questions remain about whether and to what extent they should influence care decisions. 

This article suggests strategies for how to disclose the nature and scope of resident surgeon involvement in managing intraoperative care.

This article considers which risks AI-facilitated surgical robotics pose for safety, confidentiality, informed consent, and surgical training. 

Several factors can persuade both surgeons and patients to choose robotic surgery over open surgery or conventional laparoscopy. 

More frequent use of robotic-assisted surgeries means we need to ask more questions about care quality and equity, informed consent, and conflicts of interest.

Since their adoption during the 1990s, minimally invasive surgical techniques have demonstrated postoperative surgical recovery benefits for patients. 

Robotic-assisted techniques demand enhanced team communication and feedback in operating room settings. 

Telesurgery is a form of global health diplomacy, and negotiations between LMICs and HICs can have transnational consequences.

Key unmet technological needs pertain to instrument size and adaptability secondary to the smaller pediatric robotic surgery market. 

This comic invites readers to consider aesthetic and ethical intersections of how odds might be presented—even exaggerated—to cultivate fear in public health messaging. 

This multipaneled comic follows a woman robot preparing for a breast examination. Oil “leakage” recurs in the comic, suggesting its ethical importance in metaphorically representing a patient’s stress responses.

Dr Chad M. Teven joins Ethics Talk to unravel some current and a few hoped-for surgical applications of AI and to model for us how we should be critically engaging with AI surgical research and scholarship.

Dr Matthew C. Bobel joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Robert K. Cleary: “How Should Risk Be Communicated to Patients When Developing Resident Surgeon Robotic Skills?”

Dr Jake Young joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article: “AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ Opinions Related to Robotic Surgery.” 

Dr Esha Bansal joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Drs Saran Kunaprayoon and Linda P. Zhang: “Opportunities for Global Health Diplomacy in Transnational Robotic Telesurgery.”