Surgeons around the world performed about 14% more operations with Intuitive’s da Vinci robots in the three months to 30 September than a year earlier, the company said in its third-quarter results on 20 October.
Intuitive placed 546 da Vinci systems in the quarter, up from 427 a year before, and 315 of them were its newest model, da Vinci 5. Its installed base reached 12,094 da Vinci systems. Procedures with Ion, its robot for taking lung biopsies through the airways, grew about 31%. Revenue was $3.05bn, up 22%. The results also include a $450m pre-tax charge for an antitrust settlement.
Chief executive Dave Rosa said the quarter “was marked by broad-based adoption”, and the company says customers now average more than 10,000 procedures a day across its platforms.
Why it matters: a da Vinci robot does not operate on its own. A surgeon controls every movement from a console, and the robot adds steadiness, magnified 3D vision and smaller incisions. The figures show robotic surgery still growing quickly more than 25 years after the first US clearance, as rivals such as Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson and CMR Surgical win US approval for competing systems.