A Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center study shows robot-assisted kidney surgery is faster and has better outcomes.

Dr. Ashok Hemal, a urologic surgeon, compared laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgery for repairing blockages that prevent urine from draining normally into the bladder. The researchers followed the patients for 18 months and determined both options were equally successful, but the robot-assisted technique had several advantages.

On average, robot-assisted surgery was 50 percent faster, resulted in 60 percent less blood and required a two-day hospital stay, versus 3.5 days for laparoscopic surgery.

"This was one of the first studies where a single surgeon at one center performed both types of surgery and compared the results," said Hemal, director of the Robotic and Minimally Invasive Urologic Surgery Program at Wake Forest Baptist. "It allows for a more accurate comparison of surgical options than multiple physicians performing the surgeries. The results showed that robot-assisted surgery had significant advantages for this condition. It is also generally easier for surgeons to learn."

The research, which included Drs. Satyadip Mukherjee and Kaku Singh at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, is reported in the Canadian Journal of Urology.