A meta-analysis of robotic versus laparoscopic colectomy.

BACKGROUND: Robotics, as an innovation of minimally invasive surgical methods, is developing rapidly for colectomy. But there is still no consensus on its comparative merit compared with laparoscopic resections. We conducted this meta-analysis that included randomized controlled trials and nonrandomized controlled trials of robotic colectomy (RC) versus laparoscopic colectomy (LC) to evaluate whether the safety and efficacy of RC are equivalent to those of LC.

METHODS: A search of five databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Ovid, and Web of Science), gray literature, hand searches, reference, and forward citation were performed for studies that compared clinical or oncologic outcomes of LC with RC. Clinical outcomes evaluated were conversion rates, operation times, estimated blood loss, length of hospital stay, and complications. Oncologic outcome evaluated was the number of lymph nodes collected.

RESULTS: A total of 14 studies were identified that included 125,989 patients in total, 4934 in the robotic cohort and 121,055 in the laparoscopic cohort. Meta-analysis suggested that there was a significantly longer hospital stay in the laparoscopic group (mean difference [MD] -0.65; 95% confidence interval [CI] -1.02 to -0.27; P = 0.0008). Robotic surgery was associated with a significantly lower complication rate (odds ratio 0.78; 95% CI 0.72-0.85; P ＜ 0.00001) and a significantly shorter time to recovery of bowel function (MD -0.58; 95% CI -0.96 to -0.20; P = 0.003). There were statistically significant differences in estimated blood loss (MD -19.24; 95% CI -29.38 to -9.09; P = 0.0002) and intraoperative conversion to open (odds ratio 0.56; 95% CI 0.44-0.72; P < 0.00001), but not clinical relevant. There were no significant differences in the number of lymph nodes extracted between the two groups. However, operating time (MD 49.25; 95% CI 36.78-61.72; P < 0.00001) was longer for RC than for LC.

CONCLUSIONS: RC can be performed safely and effectively with the number of lymph nodes extracted similar to LC. In addition, it can provide potential advantages of a shorter hospital stay, a shorter time to recovery of bowel function, and lower occurrence of postoperative complications. These findings seem to support the use of robotics for the minimally invasive surgical management of colectomy. However, RC had longer operating time. Future studies involving RC should focus on minimizing duration of operation.