Surgical robot incidents
The Machine Record lists 14 verified incidents involving surgical robots since 2009: 10 where a person was hurt, 2 of them fatal, 4 that reached a regulator, recall, fine, lawsuit or settlement. Counted on 2026-10-03; every case links to its sources.
- Cases
- 14
- Someone hurt
- 10
- Fatal
- 2
- Escalated
- 4
- Period
- 2009-01 to 2025-11
By year
- 2009████ 1
- 2010 0
- 2011 0
- 2012 0
- 2013████ 1
- 2014████████ 2
- 2015 0
- 2016████ 1
- 2017 0
- 2018 0
- 2019 0
- 2020 0
- 2021████████████ 3
- 2022████ 1
- 2023████ 1
- 2024████ 1
- 2025████████████ 3
By outcome
- serious injury7
- no harm4
- fatality2
- minor injury1
By type of event
- lawsuit7
- recall3
- injury3
- other1
Counts measure what was reported in English and cleared verification, not how many events took place. Fleet sizes are not public, so none of this is a rate. Rules are on the methodology page; the numbers are CC BY 4.0, cite this page. CSV, JSON and an API are on the data page.
Cases
The 14 cases behind the number
Newest first. Each one links to its timeline and to the sources it rests on.
- 2025-11-05A private Tasmanian hospital is being sued over an injury claim related to robotic surgery.Report
- 2025-06-12Medtronic issued an urgent field safety notice in Europe for its Hugo surgical robot's surgeon consoles due to potential main power supply failures, with 25 complaints received including six non-serious injuries and no serious patient harm reported.Report
- 2025-04-01Class certified for purchasers in antitrust lawsuit against surgical robot manufacturerReport
- 2024-08-14The FDA issued a warning letter to Globus Medical after finding that the company failed to properly investigate complaints of misplaced screws and delayed reporting serious injuries, including spinal cord damage to a patient, associated with its ExcelsiusGPS surgical robot.Report
- 2023-09-15Asensus Surgical issued a customer alert on September 15, 2023, warning that the Senhance surgical robot's laparoscope instrument actuator could rotate continuously after disconnection from its remote control, posing a risk of tissue trauma, though no patient harm occurred, and the FDA classified it as a Class I recall.Report
- 2022-06-03A 71-year-old man died on June 26, 2022, after undergoing robotic surgery to remove prostate cancer at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London on June 3, 2022, with a lawsuit alleging the hospital lacked the resources to safely perform the procedure and failed to transfer him sooner to a major medical center.Report
- 2021-10-29Zimmer surgical robot subject to Class I recall due to a software glitch.Recall
- 2021-09-01A da Vinci surgical robot allegedly burned and tore a patient's small intestine during colon cancer surgery in Florida in September 2021, leading to additional procedures and her death in February 2022, prompting a wrongful death lawsuit against Intuitive Surgical.Lawsuit
- 2021-07-14Hospitals sue surgical robot maker over allegedly restrictive contractsReport
- 2016-04-22$30M surgical robot defect trial settles during jury deliberationsSettlement
- 2014-09-30A piece of a surgical robot fell into a patient's abdominal cavity unnoticed during surgery, resulting in a $475,000 lawsuit.Lawsuit
- 2014-03-25Shareholders filed a derivative lawsuit against Intuitive Surgical alleging the company underreported adverse events and concealed recalls related to its da Vinci surgical robot.Report
- 2013-06-14Lawsuits allege that microscopic cracks in the insulating covers of the da Vinci Surgical System's Monopolar Curved Scissors allowed electrical current to leak and burn patients during minimally invasive surgeries at hospitals across the United States.Report
- 2009-01-01Michelle Zarick alleged that inadequately insulated electrified scissors on the da Vinci robotic surgical system caused internal injuries during a 2009 hysterectomy, resulting in intestinal prolapse and emergency surgery requiring a hip-to-hip incision.Report
Questions
What people ask about these numbers
- How many incidents involving surgical robots are on record?
- The Machine Record lists 14 verified incidents involving surgical robots since 2009: 10 where a person was hurt, 2 of them fatal, 4 that reached a regulator, recall, fine, lawsuit or settlement. Counted on 2026-10-03; every case links to its sources.
- What counts as an incident here?
- A case enters the register only when two independent published sources or one regulator record (NHTSA, CPSC, OSHA, EU Safety Gate) describe the same event with a date and an outcome. Demonstrations that went wrong, recalls, investigations, injuries and deaths all count; marketing and speculation do not.
- Is this every incident that happened?
- No. It is every incident reported in English that cleared verification. Fleet sizes are not public, so none of these numbers is a rate, and a company with more cases is often a company with more vehicles on the road and more press coverage.
- Can I reuse these numbers?
- Yes. Case metadata is CC BY 4.0: cite The Machine Record with a link. CSV and JSON exports and an API are on the data page.
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