Anesthesia experience of pediatric robotic surgery in a University Hospital

Robotic technology has a promising future in surgical field. Robotic-assisted laparoscopy is a newly advance technology which is highly accepted by most of surgeons in various surgical procedures. As the pediatric surgeons adopt and master robotic technique, anesthesiologists familiarized themselves with this technique as well. Robotic surgery required a high-quality of perioperative anesthesia care that is essential for optimizing surgical outcome and patient safety. A retrospective analysis of robotic-assisted surgery for all children under age of 18 years from June 2004 to November 2013 at King Khalid University Hospital was conducted. Data of demographic (age, sex, and weight), type of procedures, operative time, intraoperative and postoperative complications were noted. Seventy robot assisted laparoscopy procedures were performed using the da Vinci surgical system. All procedures except three cases were successfully completed using robot with mean operative time of 110 min. Nissen fundoplication (34 cases) was the commonest robotic surgical procedure performed followed by cholecystectomy, anal-pull through and gastric banding. There were no intraoperative and postoperative complications related to anesthesia. Robotic-assisted laparoscopy is a safe and feasible technique for a variety of pediatric procedures. Our findings suggest that, perioperative anesthesia care should be considered in advance with high anesthetic precautions to maximize patient safety and improve surgical outcome. It is worth to have more studies measuring clinical anesthesia outcome of pediatric robotic surgery.