Robotic surgery may give better quality of life to bladder cancer patients

NEW YORK: The outcome of robotic-assisted surgery and traditional open surgery are equally effective in treating bladder cancer, say researchers, led by one of an Indian-origin. The results, published in the journal The Lancet, may help patients and doctors to make informed decisions on the use of robotic surgery, which is not cheap, the researchers said. There has been an assumption that patients who receive robotic surgery will perceive a better quality of life than patients who have open surgery. However, the trial showed that both groups had a significant return to their previous quality of life, and there was no advantage of one group over the other at three and six months after surgery. "We have done more than four million surgeries with the robotic approach since the device came into existence, and on average we do close to a million robotic surgeries a year globally," said Dipen J. Parekh, Chief Clinical Officer at the University of Miami, Florida in the US.