Background: Robotic surgery has been developed with the aim of improving surgical quality and overcoming the\nlimitations of conventional laparoscopy in the performance of complex mini-invasive procedures. The present study\nwas designed to compare robotic and laparoscopic distal gastrectomy in the treatment of gastric cancer.\nMethods: Between June 2008 and September 2015, 41 laparoscopic and 30 robotic distal gastrectomies were\nperformed by a single surgeon at the same institution. Clinicopathological characteristics of the patients, surgical\nperformance, postoperative morbidity/mortality and pathologic data were prospectively collected and compared\nbetween the laparoscopic and robotic groups by the Chi-square test and the Mann-Whitney test, as indicated.\nResults: There were no significant differences in patient characteristics between the two groups. Mean tumor size\nwas larger in the laparoscopic than in the robotic patients (5.3 �± 0.5 cm and 3.0 �± 0.4 cm, respectively; P = 0.02).\nHowever, tumor stage distribution was similar between the two groups. The mean number of dissected lymph\nnodes was higher in the robotic than in the laparoscopic patients (39.1 �± 3.7 and 30.5 �± 2.0, respectively; P = 0.02).\nThe mean operative time was 262.6 �± 8.6 min in the laparoscopic group and 312.6 �± 15.7 min in the robotic group\n(P < 0.001). The incidences of surgery-related and surgery-unrelated complications were similar in the laparoscopic\nand in the robotic patients. There were no significant differences in short-term clinical outcomes between the two\ngroups.\nConclusions: Within the limitation of a small-sized, non-randomized analysis, our study confirms that robotic distal\ngastrectomy is a feasible and safe surgical procedure. When compared with conventional laparoscopy, robotic\nsurgery shows evident benefits in the performance of lymphadenectomy with a higher number of retrieved and\nexamined lymph nodes.
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