The experience with Hugo™ robot-assisted surgery on complex gynecological patients in Panama

The Hugo^™ robotic assisted surgery system is a relatively new robotic platform developed by Medtronic. The study objective was to describe the experience of using Hugo^™ robotic assisted surgery in gynecological surgeries and compare robotic assisted surgery-related outcomes between complex and non-complex gynecological patients at the Pacifica Salud Hospital. We performed secondary data retrospective analysis of 144 consecutive patients who underwent gynecological surgery with Hugo^™ robotic assisted surgery system (Medtronic) at the Pacifica Salud hospital in Panama City from July 19, 2021, to August 3, 2023. Complex patients were defined as those with one or more risk factors for surgery complications. Descriptive analysis of participants' sociodemographic and robotic assisted surgery-related characteristics. Due to the non-normal distribution of the RAS-related numeric variables, we compared these variables between complex and non-complex cases of gynecological patients using Kruskal-Wallis's test. The study found that Hugo^™ robotic assisted surgery system was safe for gynecological surgery in patients with and without risk factors for developing major surgery complications. None of the patients experienced any complications, and they had short hospital stays with low blood loss without requiring a blood transfusion. The Hugo^™ robotic assisted surgery system was technically sound and did not present technical failures. The results could be a reference for adopting this technology and developing best practices in the Latin American region.