Background: Minimally invasive techniques are becoming the gold standard approach to surgical treatment of obesity in adults. Robotic surgical systems have the potential to advance the use and development of minimally invasive procedures. To date, there is no study of outcomes following robotic-assisted gastric banding (RAGB) compared with laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) in children and adolescents. This study was undertaken to compare a single surgeon's results using the da Vinci surgical system for RAGB with those using LAGB in this group of patients.
Methods: A retrospective data analysis of 25 patients who underwent RAGB compared with 50 patients who underwent LAGB.
Results: The 75 patients were 8-21 years of age and included 42 (54.5%) girls. Patients in the two groups had similar baseline characteristics including gender, age, body mass index (BMI), and presence of comorbidities. No significant differences in complication rate, length of stay or percent excess weight loss at 1 year were found between the two groups. Mean operating time was significantly shorter for LAGB (50 min) compared with RAGB (74 min; P < 0.001).
Conclusions: This comparative study between RAGB and LAGB in children and adolescents demonstrates the feasibility and safety of RAGB. However, the procedure requires significantly more operative time than LAGB and fails to provide improved patient outcome.