Robot-Assisted Pancreatic Surgery: Safety and Feasibility.

The recent advent of robotic surgery has changed the surgical perspective in operating theatres worldwide. The main innovation is that a computer-based interface, located between patient and surgeon, is able to improve his/her dexterity. The goal of robotic surgery is, therefore, to reduce intraoperative complications, overcome some limits of pure laparoscopy, and, definitively, reduce the postoperative impact of surgery on the patients. A shorter hospital stay is expected to reduce the interval between access to adjuvant therapies when dealing with oncologic diseases, leading to a potential survival increase. Nevertheless, the broad clinical application of robotics to pancreatic surgery has many peculiarities. The intrinsic difficulties of this kind of surgery, the lack of specific expertise (pancreatic surgery and robotic skills), together with the need for regional centralization are the major drawbacks. However, robotic surgery has been demonstrated to be safe and feasible in pancreaticoduodenectomy, distal pancreatectomy (with or without spleen preservation), enucleation, and atypical resections.