Outcomes of Transoral Robotic Surgery: a Preliminary Clinical Experience

Objective: To report a single institution's experience with transoral robotic surgery (TORS) and its clinical outcomes.

Study Design: Preliminary clinical data from a prospective TORS study.

Setting: University tertiary care facility.

Subjects And Methods: Patients who underwent TORS at The Ohio State University Medical Center. Demographic, intraoperative, clinicopathological, and follow-up functional data were collected.

Results: Sixty-four patients underwent TORS with a median age of 56.9 years. A total of 113 TORS procedures were performed. Fifty-four patients with squamous cell cancer (SCCA) were included in the final analysis. Mean follow-up time was 11.8 months (range, 2-29). There was a trend toward longer TORS setup time, operative time, estimated blood loss, and hospital length of stay with advanced (T(3)) compared with early-stage tumors (T(1-2)). There were no major intraoperative complications, and none of the procedures were aborted because of inability to remove the tumor. Negative resection margins were achieved in 93% of cases of SCCA. No patients experienced immediate postoperative complications, and all of the patients tolerated an oral diet without any airway compromise on the day of surgery. Forty-nine patients (91%) underwent adjuvant radiation therapy (RT), with 11 patients requiring gastrostomy tube placement during RT. Addition of TORS to overall management of head and neck SCCA spared adjuvant RT or combined chemotherapy and RT (CRT) in 50% of stage I/II tumors and spared chemotherapy in 34% of stage III/IV tumors.

Conclusion: TORS is a safe procedure with minimal complications and favorable clinical and functional outcomes. It is a promising future alternative surgical treatment for laryngopharyngeal tumors.