Early clinical outcomes of robot-assisted surgery for anterior mediastinal mass: its superiority over a conventional sternotomy approach evaluated by propensity score matching†

Abstract

In carefully selected patients with relatively smaller sized masses, robot-assisted surgery resulted in excellent early clinical outcomes with lesser tube drainage, lower blood loss, shorter tube days and length of hospital stay without any postoperative complications, compared with the matched open group. Further investigation for long-term clinical outcomes and oncological outcomes is required for a robotic approach. Particularly, long-term follow-up for the local recurrence rate according to the pathological diagnoses is required.