In laparoscopic surgery the surgeon keeps control by handling patient’s tissues inside an insufflated cavity with an external fulcrum point for instrumentation. Surgery is going through a technological revolution that produces a paradigm shift over the past two decades by robotic application, since the surgical community sought the ways to obviate its limitations. It changes drastically in robotic surgery, with the surgeon taking place in a virtual environment outside the operative field, with a distant and indirect control. Robotic surgery is defined as a surgical procedure that adds a computer technology enhancement interface to the interaction between the surgeon and his patient during a surgical operation and assumes some degree of control heretofore completely reserved for the surgeon. With many advantages such as three-dimensional view, enhanced range of motion of the instruments, motion scaling, tremor filtration, and improved ergonomics, robotic surgery allows surgeons to perform more complex surgical tasks, like gastrectomy for gastric cancer.
The potential of robotic surgery is far beyond its current applications. The introduction of new robotic technologies, such as virtual and/or augmented reality and further instrumental developments, will improve proficiency and safety of gastrectomy procedures to ultimately lead to better care to our patients. Until now, robotic gastrectomy is regarded as a safe and feasible alternative to laparoscopic surgery for the treatment of gastric cancer. At the same time, robotic application for the treatment of gastric cancer has a potential for developing minimally invasive gastrectomy techniques as technical advances develop. Robotic surgery has been gaining popularity for gastric cancer treatment during last 15-year period, although conventional laparoscopic surgery is already a preferred approach. However, its penetration is not as fast as laparoscopy did in early 2000’s. Moreover, there are extremely few clinical trials for robotic surgery for gastric cancer. Thus, the real benefits of robotic application remain unclear and its impacts are needed to be investigated using well-designed prospective studies. |
