ASO Author Reflections: The Role of Robotic Gastrectomy for Gastric Cancer

Minimally invasive surgery for gastric cancer has markedly improved and provides potential benefits over open surgery over the past two decade.^1,2 The robotic system has been widely applied in gastrointestinal field. Robotic surgery has several surgical advantages such as 3D surgical field of view, better ergonomic surgical environment, easier instrument movement, less operator fatigue, and less tremor filtering for surgeons. Robotic gastrectomy (RG) was first reported in early 2000s.³ In recent clinical trials, RG is a reliable surgical procedure that leads to favorable surgical outcomes. However, few well-designed prospective randomized clinical trials or propensity score-matched analyses have compared RG and laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG). To date, Lu et al. has compared the short-term efficacy of robotic versus laparoscopic distal gastrectomy, showing that robotic distal gastrectomy achieved a lower morbidity rate, faster recovery, milder inflammatory response, and improved lymphadenectomy.⁴ …