The researchers indicated that those rates are high because of procedure complexity, infrequent use of robotic devices and less expertise using the tools in those fields.

Their paper says 144 deaths, 1,391 injuries and 8,061 device malfunctions were recorded out of a total of more than 1.7 million robotic procedures carried out between January 2000 and December 2013. Some of the most common malfunctions that lead to injuries or deaths include broken pieces of the equipment falling into the patients, electrical arcing, “unintended operation of instruments”, and software errors.

An independent analysis of reports gathered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 2000 shows that robotic surgery isn’t as safe as some people might assume.

Produced by MIT, Rush University Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the study did provide a reason for alarm.

Another category the researchers discovered the uncontrolled movement of surgical instruments, which led to the injuring of 52 individuals and the death of two patients. The fatalities and injuries, however, were more likely to occur with “more complex surgeries, such as cardiothoracic and head and neck”.

The researchers then acknowledge that the data from the records of FDA do not determine whether the machines were directly responsible to the cases of the patients, as the robots were less commonly used with the aforementioned operations.

Despite containing reports of the 144 patient deaths during robotic surgeries, the MAUDE database had the detailed accounts of only a small fraction of the procedure. In the reports involving death, they were was very little information on the specific cause. One thing the result does show, though, is that over the same period the number of deaths per procedure has remained relatively constant – suggesting that problems aren’t necessarily being ironed out. In addition, due to the fact that the use of robotic systems is growing “exponentially”, the researchers noted that the number of accidents may increase every year. It is not possible to completely eliminate these malfunctions, however according to the researchers, modifications in the design and operation of such robotic systems “may reduce these preventable incidents in the future”.

“Despite widespread adoption of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery, a non-negligible number of technical difficulties and complications are still being experienced during procedures”, the authors conclude.