Robotic versus open and video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery approaches for lobectomy

Abstract

More and more data are available on the benefits of minimally invasive thoracic surgery compared to open thoracic surgery in the curative treatment of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. However, results are conflicting, especially when video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is compared to robotic-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (RATS) for lobectomy. Our goal is to report the main results of recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses comparing RATS, VATS, and open surgery for lobectomy. Using PubMed database, we selected systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which compared the short-term outcomes of patients treated by RATS, VATS, or open surgery for lobectomy. In all but one of the systematic reviews, robotic lobectomy allowed similar short-term outcomes as VATS lobectomy and better short-term outcomes than open surgery. One meta-analysis by O’Sullivan et al. found that robotic lobectomy was associated with fewer adverse events (P < 0.00001) and lower 30-day mortality (P = 0.001), compared to VATS lobectomy. Robotic lobectomy could be a valid alternative to VATS and open lobectomy. Short-term outcomes do not appear to be different between VATS and RATS cohorts, except in one recent meta-analysis, which reported the superiority of RATS compared to VATS. Without cost analysis and randomized controlled trials with long-term outcomes, no strong conclusions can be drawn.