There has been an assumption that patients who receive robotic surgery will perceive a better quality of life than patients who have open surgery. Patients participating in the RAZOR study were asked about their quality of life at three and six months after surgery, and while both groups reported a significant return to their previous quality of life, there was no advantage of one group over the other.

Some critics of robotic surgery have expressed concern about the lack of tactile feedback – an important guide in open surgery. "When you do robotic surgery you don't feel anything," Parekh said. "It's more by visual cues. If you're doing open surgery you have the organs in your hands, you can feel them, and you assess and do these surgeries accordingly."


Parekh has extensive experience performing robotic surgeries with the da Vinci Xi Surgical System at UHealth Tower. It provides a magnified, three-dimensional view of the organs, and a wide range of motion and flexibility. Robotic surgery has become particularly popular with prostate cancer patients – 90 percent of them choose it – which would make it difficult if not impossible to do a randomized study of surgical results in prostate cancer. But Parekh says that because robotic surgery is being used in many other organs, including kidney, colorectal, OB/GYN and lung cancer, more studies are needed.

And while there are improvements in perioperative recovery with robotic technology, operating room time is significantly longer for robotic surgery.

"The findings of this study provide high-level evidence to inform a discussion between patients and their physicians regarding the benefits and risks of various approaches for a complex and often morbid surgery, like radical cystectomy," the trial description says. "It also underscores the need for further high-quality trials to critically evaluate surgical innovation prior to adoption into practice."

SOURCE University of Miami

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