Robotic urological surgery in patients with prior abdominal operations is not associated with increased complications

The da Vinci Surgical Robotic System is being increasingly used to perform complex urological operations by minimally invasive techniques. Prior abdominal surgery associated with intra-abdominal adhesions may complicate robotic surgery.

We used a cohort of consecutive 49 patients undergoing a variety of robotic urological procedures at our institution to study the impact of prior abdominal operations on early perioperative complications.

A total of 21/49 (43%) patients (Group A) had no history of prior abdominal surgery and the rest 28/49 (57%; Group B) had undergone prior abdominal surgery. The incidence of peritoneal adhesions was significantly higher in patients with prior abdominal surgery compared to the rest of the cohort, 54% versus 10% (P=0.002). The median operative time, estimated blood loss, postoperative drop in hemoglobin, time to hospital discharge, postoperative narcotic analgesic use and postoperative complication rate between group A and group B were not statistically different. The overall perioperative complication rate for the entire cohort was 14.3%, with 6-8% of complications occurring in each of the two groups (P=1.0). Comparative subset analysis of 28 patients in Group B, 15 (54%) and 13 (46%) with or without intra-abdominal adhesions did not reveal a significant difference in perioperative complication rates either. However, operative time was longer in patients with intra-abdominal adhesions compared to patients without, median of 590 (281-922) and 434 (153-723) min respectively, although not statistically significant (P=0.059).

Our study demonstrates that robotic urological surgery can be performed in patients with prior abdominal surgery without increased perioperative complications.