Comparison of Surgical Skills in Laparoscopic and Robotic Tasks Between Experienced Surgeons and Novices in Laparoscopic Surgery: An Experimental Study

PURPOSE: Robotic surgery is known to provide an improved technical ability as compared to laparoscopic surgery. We aimed to compare the efficiency of surgical skills by performing the same experimental tasks using both laparoscopic and robotic systems in an attempt to determine if a robotic system has an advantage over laparoscopic system. METHODS: Twenty participants without any robotic experience, 10 laparoscopic novices (LN: medical students) and 10 laparoscopically-experienced surgeons (LE: surgical trainees and fellows), performed 3 laparoscopic and robotic training-box-based tasks. This entire set of tasks was performed twice. RESULTS: Compared with LN, LEs showed significantly better performances in all laparoscopic tasks and in robotic task 3 during the 2 trials. Within the LN group, better performances were shown in all robotic tasks compared with the same laparoscopic tasks. However, in the LE group, compared with the same laparoscopic tasks, significantly better performance was seen only in robotic task 1. When we compared the 2 sets of trials, in the second trial, LN showed better performances in laparoscopic task 2 and robotic task 3; LE showed significantly better performance only in robotic task 3. CONCLUSION: Robotic surgery had better performance than laparoscopic surgery in all tasks during the two trials. However, these results were more noticeable for LN. These results suggest that robotic surgery can be easily learned without laparoscopic experience because of its technical advantages. However, further experimental trials are needed to investigate the advantages of robotic surgery in more detail.