Is robotic pancreatectomy indicated for patients with pancreatic cancer?

Minimally invasive pancreatic surgery (MIPS) is becoming more popular in the recent years. Robotic pancreatic surgery represents an important step, mostly for Whipple procedures, in order to reproduce the same surgical steps performed in open surgery and to facilitate the access to MIPS even by surgeons without a large experience in laparoscopic surgery. The short-term results of pancreatic robotic surgery are comparable with the one obtained by the traditional open surgery, even if the peri-operative costs, still represent a problem. Very few data are currently available regarding the long-term oncologic outcome of robotic pancreatectomy for pancreatic cancer. For this reason, more and larger studies, with a long follow-up are necessary to define the oncologic role and safety of robotic pancreatectomies.