Background: Recent reports have suggested that the use of the robot might reduce the rate of pancreatic complications following minimally invasive radical gastrectomy.
Methods: By meta-analyzing the available literature, we aimed to elucidate possible differences between conventional laparoscopic and robotic radical gastrectomy on pancreatic morbidity.
Results: More than 2000 patients from eight studies were eventually included in the analysis. The overall incidence of postoperative pancreatic complications was 2.2%, being 1.7% and 2.5% following robotic and laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG), respectively. In particular, pancreatic fistula occurred in 2.7% of patients receiving robotic gastrectomy (RG) and 3.8% of patients receiving laparoscopy.
Conclusions: The use of the robot showed a trend toward better outcomes compared with laparoscopy, despite the presence of more advanced disease and higher body mass index. The meta-analysis resulted in an odd ratio of 0.8 favoring RG over LG on pancreatic morbidity, although without statistical significance.
Keywords: gastric cancer; laparoscopic gastrectomy; minimally invasive gastrectomy; postoperative pancreatic fistula; robotic gastrectomy.