Operative choice for colon and rectal cancer: what matters?

Thearticle entitled “Long-term outcomes of robot-assisted surgeryin patients with colorectal cancer”, published in the Annals of SurgicalOncology, is a timely analysis of oncologic outcomes comparing robotic andconventional laparoscopic techniques (1). Several other studies have demonstratedequivalent short-term outcomes between robotic and laparoscopic groups,including postoperative complications and hospital length of stay (2-5).However, long-term oncologic outcomes for the robotic approach have not yetbeen well evaluated.