Is There Room for Microsurgery in Robotic Surgery?^*

Abstract

Robotic surgery opened a new era of minimally-invasive procedures, through its improved precision, elimination of tremors, greater degrees of freedom, and other facilitating aspects. The field of robotic microsurgery showed great growth in recent years in particular, since robotics offers a potentially-ideal configuration to perform the sensitive manipulations required in microsurgery. We conducted a systematic review to assess the benefits of robotic surgery and its contributions to microsurgery, comparing it with other surgical techniques used in patients of all age groups. We assessed 25 articles found in the PubMed and Cochrane databases using the terms 'robotic surgery' AND microsurgery, with a filter for studies published in the last five years, and studies conducted in humans and published in English or Portuguese. We concluded that there is plenty of room for robotic surgery in microsurgery, such as in male infertility procedures, neurological microsurgery, ocular and otological surgeries, and transoral, hepatobiliary, microvascular, plastic and reconstructive surgeries.

Keywords
robotic surgical procedures; microsurgery; minimally-invasive surgical procedures