text_1: Mixed Outcomes in Laparoscopy for Prostates
text_2: "This newspaper article reports on the findings of a study that compares prevalence and outcomes of minimally invasive laparoscopic prostate removal with the standard ""open"" surgical method. The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology provide a useful snapshot at a time when laparoscopic surgery is rapidly becoming popular. The news article does a solid job of describing the findings in detail and providing comments from independent sources who help interpret them. The reader takes away the idea that laparoscopic surgeries, despite their increased popularity, appear to have significant potential harms. But the article leaves some major questions unanswered. First, the newspaper report does not mention costs. Robot-assisted procedures are inherently controversial because the equipment is so costly but the benefits unknown. By not mentioning costs of the surgery, the article strips the findings of context. Second, the study itself looks at a very narrow question–it compares the two surgical approaches in a 65-plus population. But the analysis did not account for disease state, mortality, the side effects of surgery men are most likely to care about (impotence and incontinence), or even whether the laparoscopic procedures were robot-assisted. The possibility that selection bias colors the findings is obvious. This is an important piece of research in the field. But given its limitations, it’s not clear that reporting on the findings to a large audience has much public value."