Between October 2018 and August 2021, researchers selected 133 patients who underwent single-port robotic surgery by one surgeon at Lankenau Medical Center in Pennsylvania, USA.
All the participants had to have had a need for colorectal resection and individuals who received emergency surgery, were pregnant, were younger than 18, had stage four carcinoma or who were to unable to provide consent were excluded from the study.
Single-port colorectal surgery was completed without laparoscopic ports in 96.9% of the cases. There were no conversions to open surgery and four (3%) to laparoscopy. There were no intraoperative complications and no transfusions were necessary.
Median docking time was 6.1 minutes, median console time was 215 minutes and median operative time was 307.0 minutes. The mean abdominal incision was 5.5 cm. Ninety-seven percent were completed with one incision. Overall morbidity was 13.5% and included urinary retention (n=2), anastomotic leak (n=1) and pelvic abscess (n=2). In terms of oncologic outcomes, there were no local recurrences and negative margins were 100%. There was one distant metastasis to the lungs.
The findings were presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons.
