Robotic versus laparoscopic surgery in gynecology: which should we use?

Abstract

This review of the literature aims at assessing the safety and effectiveness of robotic versus laparoscopic surgery in benign and malignant gynecological diseases. Robotic-assisted laparoscopy is already widely used in the United States and Europe for the main gynecological procedure - hysterectomy - and has proved feasible and comfortable for other benign and malignant gynecological procedures. However, the clinical effectiveness and safety of robotic surgery compared with standard laparoscopy have not been undoubtedly established. We reviewed the literature by searching in the Ovid/MEDLINE, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases for all the articles published from January 1995 to September 2015. More rigorous experimental studies are needed, that compare robotic-assisted surgery and laparoscopic surgery for gynecological diseases. However, current data seem to encourage the use of minimally-invasive surgery to treat benign and malignant gynecological diseases.