Robot-assisted rectal surgery is gaining acceptance but, with some exceptions, outcomes are not significantly improved over the conventional laparoscopic approach, a meta-analysis has found.
Nimur/Wikimedia Commons
Conducted by Katie Jones, MD, and her colleagues at Brighton and Sussex (England) University Hospital NHS Trust, the meta-analysis was designed as a follow-up to ROLARR (isrctn.org ID: ISRCTN80500123), a randomized clinical trial in which robot-assisted and. conventional laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer were studied for risk of conversion to open surgery. That trial findings showed that robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery did not significantly reduce the risk of conversion. For other outcomes (pathology, complications, bladder, and sexual function), the differences between the two approaches were insignificant. But the two surgical approaches did differ on cost: The robot-assisted operation was significantly more expensive than the conventional laparoscopic procedure.
Dr. Jones and her colleagues analyzed data from ROLARR in the context of 27 other qualifying studies and confirmed many of the ROLARR findings. The 27 case control studies comprised 5,547 patients and had comparable outcomes data.
The outcomes of interest were duration of operation, conversion risk, blood loss, length of stay, oncological outcomes, time to first flatus, reoperation rate, postoperative morbidity, and postoperative mortality.
The investigators found that duration of the operation was longer for the robot-assisted procedure, compared with the conventional laparoscopic approach, though this difference was not statistically significant (z = 1.28, P = .20), and blood loss, morbidity, and mortality were similar between the two groups. Oncological outcomes (risk of positive circumferential resection margins, lymph node yield, and length of distal resection margins) were similar for these two surgical approaches.
In contrast to the ROLARR findings, this meta-analysis found that the risk of conversion favored the robot-assisted procedure (z = 5.51, P = .00001). Hospital stay (z = 2.46, P = 01) and time to first flatus outcomes (z = 3.09, P = .002) favored the robot-assisted procedure. Postop morbidity and mortality and reoperation rate were similar in the two groups.
“Based upon the findings of this largest-ever series on the role of robotic surgery in rectal cancer resection, the [robot-assisted procedure] is certainly a feasible technique and oncologically safe surgical intervention but failed to demonstrate any superiority over [the conventional laparoscopic approach] for many surgical outcomes,” the investigators wrote. “Mere advantage of robotic surgery was noted in only three postoperative outcomes, that is early passage of flatus, lower risk of conversion, and shorter hospitalization.”
Dr. Jones and her colleagues declared they had no conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Jones K et al. World J Gastroentrol. 2018 Nov 15. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v10.i11.449.