Transoral robotic surgery: supraglottic partial laryngectomy.

OBJECTIVES

We assessed the feasibility of performing transoral supraglottic partial laryngectomy with robotic instrumentation.

METHODS

Transoral robotic surgery (TORS) was performed on 3 human patients with supraglottic carcinoma in a prospective human trial. The study was approved by our institutional review board and involved the da Vinci Surgical Robot (Intuitive Surgical, Inc, Sunnyvale, California).

RESULTS

All procedures were completed robotically. The median overall operation time to perform the robotic procedure was 120 minutes (range, 1:32:48 to 2:58:18), including 18 minutes (range, 00:6:07 to 00:30:39) for exposure and robotic positioning. There were no intraoperative or postoperative complications or surgical mortality.

CONCLUSIONS

The preliminary results of our series suggest that application of the da Vinci robotic surgical system for TORS to supraglottic partial laryngectomy is technically feasible and relatively safe. Furthermore, TORS provides excellent surgical exposure that allows complete tumor resection. Most importantly, TORS provides an alternative to open approaches and "conventional" transoral supraglottic partial laryngectomy.