Surgical resection of pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasm by minimally invasive surgery—the robotic approach?

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been increasing adoption of minimally invasive pancreatic surgery world-wide and this has naturally expanded to the management of pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (PNENs). More recently, robotic pancreatic surgery (RPS) was introduced to overcome the limitations during laparoscopic pancreatic surgery (LPS). Due to the relative rarity of PNEN and the novelty of minimally invasive pancreatic surgery in particular RPS today, the evidence for robotic surgery in PNENs remains extremely limited. Presently, the available evidence is limited to a few low level retrospective case-control studies. These studies suggest that RPS may be associated with a higher splenic preservation rates and lower open conversion rates compared to conventional laparoscopic surgery. Ideally a prospective randomized trial should be performed but this would be extremely challenging due to the rarity of PNEN, making it almost impossible to conduct a sufficiently powered trial.