Robotic assisted surgery has become the standard of care in most surgical specialties, however, in the UK, endocrine surgery has not fully adopted this. This paper presents the experience fifty (50) patients who had robotic assisted adrenalectomies at a tertiary referral endocrine surgery department in England. Outcomes were compared to national and international performance standards.

Fifty elective cases were performed over a 14-month period. Patient demographics including age, comorbidities, indications and technical details such as docking time, time on operative console, rates of conversion to open procedure, complications, length of stay and tumour size were analysed.

Of the 50 cases included, 66% (n=33) of the patients were female with median age of 59 years. Median BMI was 28. Functional tumours accounted for 78% (n=39) of cases with the most common being pheochromocytomas and cortisol producing adenomas. Median docking time was 5 minutes with a median intra-operative time on the console of 45 minutes. Tumour size ranged between 1 cm to 14 cm. Median length of stay postoperatively was 1 day. There was only one conversion to open procedure. There were no complications or mortalities.

This cases series demonstrates robotic assisted adrenalectomies to be a safe and feasible approach with similar outcomes to laparoscopic surgery. Adoption and expansion of robotic assisted surgery will improve outcomes for patients, however large clinical trials and longer follow up are needed.