Short-term and long-term outcomes of robotic, laparoscopic and open radical gastrectomy in gastric cancer: A single-center retrospective study

Background: Few studies on the comparison among robotic, laparoscopic, and open gastrectomy had been reported in gastric cancer . The goal of this study was to evaluate the advantages of robotic-assisted gastrectomy (RAG) by comparing with laparoscopic-assisted gastrectomy(LAG) and open gastrectomy (OG). Methods: 147 gastric cancer patients who underwent gastrectomy were enrolled and retrospectively analyzed between January 2017 and July 2019. Short-term outcomes such as operation time, intraoperative estimated blood loss(EBL),number of retrieved lymph nodes, postoperative recovery, learning curve, and long-term outcome such as overall survival(OS) was compared among RAG, LAG and OG groups. Results: RAG group included 47 patients, 44 in the LAG, and 61 in the OG. Basic information such as gender, age, BMI, ASA degree were similar among three groups, and there were no statistically significances in pathological TNM staging, tumor resection extent, resection margin, methods of reconstruction( P ＞0.05). The cumulative sum(CUSUM) method showed that learning curve of RAG reached stability after 17 cases . For short-term outcomes, the RAG group had the shortest EBL( P =0.033), the shortest time to first flatus( P ＜0.001), shortest time to first intake liquid diet ( P =0.004),shortest postoperative hospital stay ( P =0.023)and the largest number of retrieved lymph nodes( P =0.044),the longest operation time( P ＜0.001), the most expensive treatment cost( P ＜0.001),however, there were no significant differences in postoperative drainage, postoperative white blood cell(WBC)count and early complications among three group( P ＞0.05). In addition to long-term outcome, similar OS was observed in three groups. Conclusion: Compared with LAG and OG, RAG has certain advantages in short-term outcomes and is a safe and reliable surgical method. But still need further prospective, multi-center research to confirm this.