[Totally Robotic Surgery for Rectal Cancer with Transanal Specimen Extraction and Robot-sewn Anastomosis Technique]

Objective: To summarize the clinical experience of transanal specimen extraction and introduce how to achieve the rectum reconstruction in robotic rectal cancer surgery.

Methods: Clinical data of 15 cases undergoing rectal cancer resection with the da Vinci robotic system in Jinglin Hospital between February 2012 and May 2012 were analyzed retrospectively.

Results: There were 9 males and 6 females with a mean age of (61.5±9.2) years old. All the cases underwent robotic surgery successfully without intraoperative conversion. The average operative time was (154.7±10.6) min with minimal blood loss (17.3±6.5) ml. The time to first flatus was (2.3±0.8) days postoperatively. The postoperative hospital stay was (3.3±0.6) days. The mean number of lymph node harvested from the surgical specimen was (15.0±1.2). All the resection margins were negative. All the patients had postoperative follow-up ranging from 4 to 8 weeks. There were no postoperative infection, anastomotic leak, incision hernia, or short-term deaths.

Conclusion: da Vinci robotic system greatly reduces the difficulty of the rectal cancer surgery with its unique light source system and flexible equipment operation.