Comparative effectiveness of robotic assisted and open radical cystectomy in contemporary cohorts of bladder cancer patients: An international multicenter collaboration

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES:In the last 15 years robotic surgery became the leading approach for treatment of prostate and kidney cancer. Following the success of these procedures, robotic system has been more recently applied to treat bladder cancer (BCa) but sparse data exists regarding the diffusion of robotic radical cystectomy (RARC) and its trend in contemporary patients. Aim of our study is comparing utilization trends and time-changes in perioperative outcomes of RARC using data from a large multicenter collaboration.METHODS:We retrospectively evaluated data from 2,713 patients treated with open radical cystectomy (ORC) and RARC for BCa at 16 American and European institutions between 2006 and 2018. All patients had completed data regarding pre-, intra- e post-operative characteristics. The Kruskal-Wallis test and Chi-square test evaluated differences between continuous and categorical variables, respectively.RESULTS:Overall, 971 (36%) patients underwent RARC and 1,705 (64%) ORC. RARC became the m...