David J Morrell, MD, Steven R Siegal, MD, Vamsi V Alli, MD, Jerome R Lyn-Sue, MD. Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Introduction: Robotic surgery has increasingly become a significant platform for general and gynecologic surgery. Despite this increasing prevalence, many barriers and concerns exist that may limit further utilization of this platform. One such barrier is the perception that the adoption of the robotic platform leads to increased operating room (OR) turnover times. This study aims to compare OR turnover times in robotic versus non-robotic procedures.
Methods: All procedures performed at a single university medical center with no dedicated robotic OR over the first four months of the 2018-2019 academic year were reviewed. All OR cases (robotic, laparoscopic, open, and endoscopic) performed by minimally invasive general surgeons and gynecologists who performed a mix of both robotic and other cases were included. Procedures were stratified as robotic and non-robotic cases. The primary outcome of interest was OR turnover time. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data and OR turnover times were compared using a two-sample t-test.
Results: A total of 341 procedures consisting of 130 robotic cases and 211 non-robotic cases (118 laparoscopic, 48 open, 45 endoscopic) were performed by 4 minimally invasive general surgeons and 3 minimally invasive gynecologists. The most common robotic procedures were hysterectomy (31.5%), inguinal hernia repair (14.6%), and cholecystectomy (10.0%) and the most common non-robotic procedures were inguinal hernia repair (13.3%), sleeve gastrectomy (12.3%), and cholecystectomy (10.4%). Mean OR turnover time for robotic procedures was 33.5±11.6 minutes compared to a mean of 34.2±12.6 minutes for non-robotic procedures (p = 0.5917).
Conclusions: Robotic procedures can be performed with similar OR turnover times to those of non-robotic procedures. Perceived barriers to adoption of robotic surgery due to increased turnover times can be overcome and allow for broader implementation of robotic surgery.
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This abstract was accepted for Poster presentation at the 2020 SAGES Virtual Meeting in the Robotics / Advanced Technologies topic. Its program number was: P580 and its Abstract ID was: 101408