Robotic Surgery in Children

Abstract

Robotic surgery is a promising new field in pediatric surgery expected to develop markedly. It involves the application of technology that minimizes stresses related to therapeutic intervention, which will greatly benefit the treatment of children requiring surgery. While it is only a matter of time before robotic surgery is adopted routinely, there are technical issues related to instruments and equipment required to perform the wide range of surgical procedures in patients of various sizes covered by pediatric surgery; in other words, equipment must also be adaptable enough to use from neonates to teenagers. Unfortunately, current robotic instruments are just scaled down adult instruments, for example, instruments used with 2D/3D telescopes scaled down from 8 mm to 5 mm. We anticipate that, as the number of complex pediatric laparoscopic/thoracoscopic procedures performed with robotic enhancement increases, there will be improvement in the hardware with associated measurable benefits in patient outcomes.