The expansion condition of amount and complexity of urologic robotic surgery in 2000 patients: A 13-year experience sharing

Background: Robot-assisted surgeries have been found to possess a number of advantages over conventional surgeries, and these benefits have promoted the expanded use of robot-assisted procedures in recent years, both in the numbers of procedures performed and the types of procedures to which robotic assistance is applied. This study sought to quantify this expanded use of robot-assisted surgeries over a 13-year period at a single surgeon in Taiwan. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed a total of 2000 patients who underwent robot-assisted urologic surgeries between December of 2005 and August of 2018. For the purposes of statistical comparison, we divided this 13-year period into four subperiods and classified the surgeries into eight types depending on the body part or parts upon which they were performed. Results: The total number of surgeries in the first, second, third, and fourth subperiods was 124, 173, 738, and 965, respectively; this represented a significant increase in the total number of robot-assisted urologic surgeries performed across the four subperiods. In addition, there were also significant increases in the numbers of surgeries for seven of the eight categories of surgeries across the four subperiods. Conclusion: These results show that our institution's experience with robot assistance in urological surgeries from 2005 to 2018 was consistent with the generally expanded use of such assistance documented by earlier studies, with both the numbers and types of robot-assisted surgeries performed increasing significantly over that period.