Robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery, more commonly known as robotic surgery, is an evolution of laparoscopic surgery. Like laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery is performed through small skin incisions of between five and ten millimeters through which we introduce the operating and vision instruments.
The great advantage of these approaches lies in the fact that it allows us to operate with an amplified vision, much superior to that allowed by traditional surgery, especially in deep organs, and leads to better dissection results.
In robotic surgery, the instruments and the camera are mounted on robotic arms, which the surgeon controls through a console. The robotic arms allow great mobility of the instruments, identical to that achieved by the surgeon’s hand. They also eliminate any degree of tremor, which, together with the above, achieves absolute precision in all movements.
In urology, robotic surgery is used in the same pathologies in which we use laparoscopy, that is, in oncologic surgery and reconstructive surgery.
In oncologic surgery there is a great deal of experience in pelvic surgery, especially in radical prostatectomy and less in radical cystectomy. In these interventions good cure rates are achieved, reducing the sequelae produced in open surgery, especially with regard to urinary incontinence and preservation of sexual potency.
Undoubtedly, it is in reconstructive techniques such as ureteropyeloplasty or ureteral reimplantation that robotic surgery offers the greatest benefits, since it combines the advantages of the laparoscopic approach in terms of vision with the ease of movement required for this type of technique, which is a limitation for traditional laparoscopic surgery.
Robotic surgery is therefore a useful surgical alternative that is superior in many respects to traditional open surgical approaches.