[Robotic surgery in Urology : New kids on the block]

Minimally invasive surgery, which became an elementary part of urologic surgery at the beginning of the 1990s, is associated with clear advantages for patients such as increased cosmesis, decreased blood loss, less postoperative pain, and faster patient recovery. Increasing experience was associated with comparable operative outcomes to open surgery, and more recently better oncologic and functional results with minimally invasive surgical techniques as shown in large studies in the literature. Robotic surgery was introduced at the beginning of 2000 and has facilitated minimally invasive surgery. Robotic assisted laparoscopic operations (e.g., radical prostatectomy or partial nephrectomy) have evolved rapidly to become widely accepted procedures. However, robotic surgery was monopolized by one company, namely Intuitive Surgical which owns the majority of the patents in this field. The market and the interest were growing, but unfortunately the prices were rising and exceeded 2 million Euros. This reality has been the main obstacle for many clinics who wanted to adopt robotic surgery. In recent years, new companies have developed and patented alternative robotic surgical systems after earlier patents of Intuitive Surgical expired. Thus, real competition could start in the robotic market. In this article, we introduce these new robotic platforms for urologic surgery.