A new study undertaken in Turin, Italy has shown that robot assisted radical prostatectomy provides better results where continence and potency are concerned.
Francesco Porpiglia, MD, of San Luigi Gonzaga Hospital-Orbassano, University of Turin and his colleagues studied 120 patients with localised prostate cancer, with 60 of the men having had robot assisted radical prostatectomy, while the remainder underwent laparoscopic radical prostatectomy.
All of the procedures where performed by the same surgeon.
The mens’ continence was evaluated at catheter removal, then again 48 hours later. Their continence and potency were evaluated at intervals one, three, six and 12 months after the surgery.
The robot assisted prostatectomy group recorded a higher rate of continence at each evaluation checkpoint.
After three months, continence rates were
- 80% in the robotic assisted surgery group
- 61.6% in the laparoscopic radical surgery group
- 95% in the robotic assisted surgery group
- 83.3% in the laparoscopic radical surgery group
Among patients who were potent before their robotic assisted surgery and were treated using nerve-sparing techniques, the rate of erection recovery was 80%. The rate of erection recovery for the laparoscopic radical surgery group was 54.2%.
See the details of the study here.
