Robotic Versus Laparoscopic Ventral Hernia Repair

Objective: Report the 2-year outcomes of a multicenter randomized controlled trial comparing robotic versus laparoscopic intraperitoneal onlay mesh ventral hernia repair. Background: Ventral hernia repair is one of the most common operations performed by general surgeons. To our knowledge, no studies have been published to date comparing long-term outcomes of laparoscopic versus robotic ventral hernia repair. Methods: The trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03490266). Clinical outcomes included surgical site infection, surgical site occurrence, hernia occurrence, readmission, reoperation, and mortality. Results: A total of 175 consecutive patients were approached that were deemed eligible for elective minimally invasive ventral hernia repair. In all, 124 were randomized and 101 completed follow-up at 2 years. Two-year follow-up was completed in 54 patients (83%) in the robotic arm and 47 patients (80%) in the laparoscopic arm. No differences were seen in surgical site infection or surgical site occurrence. Hernia recurrence occurred in 2 patients (4%) receiving robotic repair versus in 6 patients (13%) receiving laparoscopic repair (relative risk: 0.3, 95% CI: 0.06–1.39; P=0.12). No patients (0%) required reoperation in the robotic arm whereas 5 patients (11%) underwent reoperation in the laparoscopic arm (P=0.019, relative risk not calculatable due to null outcome). Conclusions: Robotic ventral hernia repair demonstrated at least similar if not improved outcomes at 2 years compared with laparoscopy. There is potential benefit with robotic repair; however, additional multi-center trials and longer follow-up are needed to validate the hypothesis-generating findings of this study.