RobotRisk / Neuralink / 2024-05-08

Neuralink brain implant threads retract in first human patient

S3 · 05/08
2024 · Neuralink

Record

Company	Neuralink
Category	medical robotics
Type	malfunction
Date	05/08 2024
Time of day	not documented
Location	no physical site (recall / fleet-wide / aggregate record)
Severity	S3 (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault)
Scale	-
Confidence	high
Verification	Yes - adversarially checked against the cited source
Source	CBS News

What happened

Threads from Neuralink's implanted brain-computer interface partially retracted from the first human patient's brain after surgery, reducing the number of functioning electrodes; Neuralink adjusted software to compensate.

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Comparable malfunction events in medical robotics

Sev	Date	Company	Event
S1	2026-03	Keenon Robotics	Restaurant service robot malfunctions, scatters tableware
S3	2025	Intuitive Surgical	2015-2025 MAUDE study finds continued adverse event rate in da Vinci procedures
S4	2021-09	Intuitive Surgical	Lawsuit: da Vinci surgical robot burned woman's small intestine
S4	2013	Intuitive Surgical	14-year FDA MAUDE analysis finds 144 deaths, 1,391 injuries in robotic surgery (2000-2013)
S2		Medtronic Hugo	Field safety notice for Hugo surgeon console power supply failure
S4		Intuitive Surgical	NBC News 10-year MAUDE analysis of da Vinci adverse events

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- Federal inquiry into Neuralink over animal deaths in implant testing

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