Background: The adoption of minimally invasive surgery for transduodenal ampullectomy has been slow because of special characteristics and complexity of this procedure.
Methods: Six patients underwent robotic transduodenal ampullectomy. We employed novel methods to facilitate exposure of the ampulla.
Results: All patients completed robotic transduodenal ampullectomy, but one patient was immediately converted to robotic pancreaticoduodenectomy because of presence of invasive carcinoma on frozen biopsy. The final pathologic report revealed high-grade dysplasia in four patients, low-grade dyplasia in one, and T2N0 in one patient who converted to pancreaticoduodenectomy. There was no immediate postoperative complication or mortality. One patient was readmitted after 3 months because of stricture of the bile duct outlet. There was no recurrence over a median follow-up period of 20 months.
Conclusion: An appropriate combination of patient positioning and retraction method helps the robot surgical system to provide competent performance for sophisticated and precise manipulation of ampullary lesions.
Keywords: ampulla of Vater; duodenal neoplasm; minimally invasive surgery; robotics.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.