Robotic versus laparoscopic adrenalectomy in obese patients

Surgical Endoscopy, 10/23/2012 Clinical Article

Aksoy E et al. – The aim of this study is to compare perioperative outcomes of RA versus LA in obese patients. The study did not show any difference in perioperative outcomes between RA and LA in obese patients. These results suggest that the difficulties in maintaining exposure and dissection in obese patients nullify the advantages of robotic articulating versus rigid laparoscopic instruments in adrenal surgery.

Methods

• Between 2003 and 2012, 99 obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) patients underwent adrenalectomy at a tertiary academic center.
• Of these, 42 patients had RA and 57 had LA. The perioperative outcomes of these patients were compared between the RA and LA groups.
• Data were collected from a prospectively maintained, institutional review board approved database.
• Clinical and perioperative parameters were analyzed using Student t and χ2 tests.
• All data are expressed as mean ± standard error of the mean.

Results

• The groups were similar in terms of age, gender, and tumor side.
• Body mass index was lower in the robotic versus laparoscopic group (35.4 ± 1.0 vs. 38.8 ± 0.8 kg/m2, respectively, p = 0.01).
• Tumor size (4.0 ± 0.4 vs. 4.3 ± 0.3 cm, respectively, p = 0.56), skin–to–skin operative time (186.1 ± 12.1 vs. 187.3 ± 11 min, respectively, p = 0.94), estimated blood loss (50.3 ± 24.3 vs. 76.6 ± 21.3 ml, respectively, p = 0.42), and hospital stay (1.3 ± 0.1 vs. 1.6 ± 0.1 days, respectively, p = 0.06) were similar in both groups.
• The conversion to open rate was zero in the robotic and 5.2 % in the laparoscopic group (p = 0.06).
• The 30–day morbidity was 4.8 % in the robotic and 7 % in the laparoscopic group (p = 0.63).

From MDLinx