-Review-

Current Status of Robotic Gastrointestinal Surgery

Keisuke Minamimura¹, Keisuke Hara¹, Satoshi Matsumoto¹, Tomohiko Yasuda¹, Hiroki Arai¹, Daisuke Kakinuma¹, Yukio Ohshiro¹, Youichi Kawano¹, Masanori Watanabe¹, Hideyuki Suzuki¹ and Hiroshi Yoshida²

¹Department of Surgery, Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokusoh Hospital, Chiba, Japan
²Department of Surgery, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, Japan

Development of surgical support robots began in the 1980s as a navigation and auxiliary device for endoscopic surgery. For remote surgery on the battlefield, a master-slave-type surgical support robot was developed, in which a console surgeon operates the robot at will. The da Vinci surgical system, which currently dominates the global robotic surgery market, received United States Food and Drug Administration and regulatory approval in Japan in 2000 and 2009 respectively. The latest, fourth generation, da Vinci Xi has a good field of view via a three-dimensional monitor, highly operable forceps, a motion scale function, and a tremor-filtered articulated function. Gastroenterological tract robotic surgery is safe and minimally invasive when accessing and operating on the esophagus, stomach, colon, and rectum. The learning curve is said to be short, and robotic surgery will likely be standardized soon. Therefore, robotic surgery training should be systematized for young surgeons so that it can be further standardized and later adapted to a wider range of surgeries. This article reviews current trends and potential developments in robotic surgery.

J Nippon Med Sch 2023; 90: 308-315

Keywords
robotic surgery, minimally invasive surgery, gastrointestinal system

Correspondence to
Keisuke Minamimura, Department of Surgery, Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokusoh Hospital, 1715 Kamagari, Inzai, Chiba 270-1694, Japan
m-keisuke@nms.ac.jp

Received, October 17, 2022
Accepted, April 17, 2023