Short-term outcomes of robot-assisted versus conventional minimally invasive esophagectomy for esophageal cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 18,187 patients

The role of robotic surgery in the curative-intent treatment of esophageal cancer patients is yet to be defined.

To compare short-term outcomes between conventional minimally invasive (cMIE) and robot-assisted minimally invasive esophagectomy (RAMIE) in esophageal cancer patients.

PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Library were systematically searched.

The included studies compared short-term outcomes between cMIE and RAMIE.

Individual risk of bias was calculated using the MINORS and RoB2 scales.

There were no statistically significant differences between RAMIE and cMIE regarding conversion to open procedure, mean number of harvested lymph nodes in the mediastinum, abdomen and along the right recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN), 30- and 90-day mortality rates, chyle leakage, RLN palsy as well as cardiac and infectious complication rates.

Estimated blood loss (MD − 71.78 mL, p  < 0.00001), total number of harvested lymph nodes (MD 2.18 nodes, p  < 0.0001) and along the left RLN (MD 0.73 nodes, p  = 0.03), pulmonary complications (RR 0.70, p  = 0.001) and length of hospital stay (MD − 3.03 days, p  < 0.0001) are outcomes that favored RAMIE.

A significantly shorter operating time (MD 29.01 min, p  = 0.004) and a lower rate of anastomotic leakage (RR 1.23, p  = 0.0005) were seen in cMIE.

RAMIE has indicated to be a safe and feasible alternative to cMIE, with a tendency towards superiority in blood loss, lymph node yield, pulmonary complications and length of hospital stay.

There was significant heterogeneity among studies for some of the outcomes measured.

Further studies are necessary to confirm these results and overcome current limitations.