Robotic rectal cancer surgery: still waiting for evidence (or not)?

It is always time to coming across sound scientific evidence regarding minimally invasive rectal cancer surgery. Especially regarding how much robotic surgery may benefit rectal cancer patients operated on by admittedly experienced surgeons. The fact that presently a robotic approach is more expensive and more time consuming is not particularly relevant. The same features may still be observed when comparing a laparoscopic to an open approach. Notwithstanding, it has been 10 years now that an audit of the proportion of colectomies performed laparoscopically in the United States identified that for 9,075 patients administratively identified, 50% of the cases were performed laparoscopically (1).