Among patients who require resection for rectal cancer, robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery offers no advantage over conventional laparoscopy in reducing the need to convert to laparotomy, according to a recent randomized trial. Among the details:

• The study included 471 patients who underwent rectal cancer resection, all of whom had adenocarcinoma and received treatment at 29 locations in 10 countries by 40 surgeons.

• Among patients who had robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery, 8.1% had to be converted to laparotomy, compared to 12.2% for patients who had had conventional laparoscopic surgery, a non-statistically significant difference.
• The study also measured differences in several other parameters, including intraoperative complications, postoperative complications, 30-day mortality, bladder dysfunction, and sexual dysfunction, none of which were found to result in statistically significant advantages for either surgical option.