Symposium: Robotic surgery in urology: Hype, hope, and reality – Modern Medicine
Community urologists who want to learn this must have an adequate volume of cases, at least 20 prostatectomies a year, and it probably will take 20 or 30 procedures before they are comfortable. For someone doing less than 20 cases a year, it doesn’t make much sense. You have to do this procedure with some regularity to keep up your skills.
Pruthi: I hesitate to suggest a number because of the different issues we have mentioned. In the Henry Ford experience, when they looked at complications, the learning curve was 200 cases.
2 At Vanderbilt, the surgeon-reported learning curve was 250 cases.
The panel from Duke, Tulane, and the University of North Carolina discuss robotic surgery, focusing in robotic prostatectomy. It is a good read for urologists considering starting to do robotic surgery or ones early on in the learning curve. The range to get comfortable with robotic surgery was from 10 to 30 cases.