Robotic- <i>vs</i> laparoscopic-assisted proctectomy for locally advanced rectal cancer based on propensity score matching: Short-term outcomes at a colorectal center in China

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Reports in the field of robotic surgery for rectal cancer are increasing year by year. However, most of these studies enroll patients at a relatively early stage and have small sample sizes. In fact, studies only on patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) and with relatively large sample sizes are lacking. AIM: To investigate whether the short-term outcomes differed between robotic-assisted proctectomy (RAP) and laparoscopic-assisted proctectomy (LAP) for LARC. METHODS: The clinicopathological data of patients with LARC who underwent robotic- or laparoscopic-assisted radical surgery between January 2015 and October 2019 were collected retrospectively. To reduce patient selection bias, we used the clinical baseline characteristics of the two groups of patients as covariates for propensity-score matching (PSM) analysis. Short-term outcomes were compared between the two groups. RESULTS: 0.05). CONCLUSION: This retrospective study indicated that RAP is a safe and feasible method for LARC with better short-term outcomes than LAP, but we have to admit that the clinically significant of part of indicators are relatively small in the practical situation.