2020 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

All Content > Enterprise News Story > Northeast

Awarded to

Nick Mulcahy, Deputy News Editor, Medscape Medical News, Oncology

Entry details

Robotic Mastectomy in US: Starts, Draws Fire, Stops

Issue or publication date: 02/07/2019
Publication name: Medscape
Publishing company: Medscape
Website home page: Medscape.com

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

Medscape is the leading online destination for physicians and healthcare professionals worldwide, delivering clinical news and perspectives, point-of-care drug and disease information and relevant professional education to improve patient care. On an annual basis, Medscape members total 3.6 million worldwide, including 686,000 active US physicians. Medscape.com, which is free to the public with registration, hosts breaking news on drug approvals & medical advances across 30+ specialties, coverage of key data presentations from more than 200 medical meetings, expert perspectives from renowned medical leaders, and special reports addressing relevant issues for physicians.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

It's an appealing pitch for women with invasive breast cancer undergoing mastectomy and reconstruction: Using a robot, a surgeon could perform the procedure and leave no visible scars. The first such surgery in the US was performed in September 2018, but after pushback from surgeon-turned-patient-advocate Hooman Noorchashm, MD, the New Jersey hospital "decided to suspend the procedure until further review," Medscape's Nick Mulcahy reported.

Three weeks after Mulcahy's story, the FDA issued a warning about robotic mastectomy and other non-approved oncologic surgery uses of the robot (which Mulcahy also covered: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/909691). That was not a coincidence, according to Noorchashm, who has campaigned against use of the robotic surgery devices (and others). "I urge you to report on today's FDA advisory, which I know was prompted as a result of your reporting on the potential safety concerns with robotic mastectomy," Noorchashm wrote to Mulcahy, saying that he believed the Medscape story was especially influential because of the headline.

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Entry URL(s), if applicable:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/908823

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