The Motley Fool: Intuitive Surgical, Inc.'s Growing Pains Still Painful

There's a lot about the Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ: ISRG  ) story that feels familiar. Whether you look at recent examples, like transcatheter heart valves and left ventricular assist devices, or more distant historical examples, like stents, Intuitive Surgical has followed that familiar pattern of "you don't get it ... this changes everything and valuations don't matter" to "oh no! It's not growing to infinity!"

I don't mean to flippant about what has surely been a harrowing couple of years for Intuitive Surgical shareholders. The good news is that clinical data continue to support the argument that robotic surgery deserves its place at the table and has value to offer alongside the minimally invasive tools and approaches advanced by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ  ) and Covidien (NYSE: COV  ) . The bad news is that the stock gets whipsawed as short term-focused analysts and institutions obsess over the next year or the next quarter and cannot look at the longer term.
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Intuitive Surgical, Inc.'s Growing Pains Still Painful