What Is Robotic Surgery? Is This An Option For Me? What About Laparoscopy?

Robotic surgery is a special kind of laparoscopic surgery in which robotic “arms” are attached to the laparoscopic instruments. The robot allows the surgeon to have more freedom of motion and also to see your operation in three dimensions, as opposed to two dimensions with laparoscopy.

Both laparoscopy and robotic surgery are called “minimally invasive” because they do not require a large incision in the abdomen but instead use multiple small incisions through which “trocars” are placed. Your surgery is done by long instruments that go through these trocars and a camera attached to a fiber-optic scope is used so the surgeons can see what they are doing on specialized video screens.

Laparoscopy and robotic surgery are very similar techniques in terms of outcome for the patient, but they require very different skill sets of the surgeon. Some surgeons prefer one technique over the other, but both give the same result to the patient.

Minimally invasive surgery allows a shorter hospital stay, usually only one night, and a faster post-operative recovery, as well as lower blood loss and fewer wound infections than open surgery. It should be noted that both laparoscopy and robotic surgery are associated with an increased rate of injury to the urinary tract over open surgery.

Many groups have reported their results on both laparoscopy and robotic laparoscopy for treatment of endometrial cancer. These results suggest that both approaches are safe and both give the same surgical result (usually as measured by numbers of lymph nodes obtained) as the traditional open surgery (called laparotomy). In general, the actual operating time is longer with minimally invasive surgery, but the length of hospital stay and amount of blood loss is much lower.

Obese women may benefit from the minimally invasive approach because they will not need to have a long abdominal incision. Obese women with endometrial cancer who undergo laparotomy are at high risk for wound infection and/or wound breakdown (opening of the skin) that can require lengthy wound care.

The referral I got from the customer I work with (an oncologist from another state) was for a doctor who performed robotic surgery. When I met with that surgeon, I was not a candidate for robotics but we did decide on total laparoscopic surgery. It made a tremendous difference to my recuperation and time off work.