Robotic Surgery in Children: Embracing the Future

Robotic surgery, defined as minimally invasive surgery (MIS) with the assistance of tele manipulators, was developed to increase the surgeon’s skills, accuracy and high precision during complex surgery. In a relatively short amount of time, robotic minimally invasive surgery has been rapidly adopted for a wide variety of surgical procedures in adult patients across a broad spectrum of surgical specialties, included pediatric surgery. The first case of robotic minimally invasive surgery in children was a Nissen fundoplication that was performed in July 2000 and since then, robotic techniques have been slowly adopted by select pediatric surgical specialists. The real innovation, especially for children, is that robotic surgery permits previously intangible minimal access surgical approaches for complex reconstructive procedures. But, unfortunately, there are some limitations, that slow down the spread of this technology in pediatric field such as the size and the higher costs, that needs to be overcome. The use of robotic-assisted surgery is increasing even in younger children, infants, and neonates. However, more strong studies are needed in order to assess the scientific evidence of this approach versus the conventional open or laparoscopic techniques.