Advantages of advanced laparoscopic systems

Background: Conventional laparoscopy offers great benefits to our patients, but suffers from major technical drawbacks. Advanced laparoscopic systems are being developed adressing some of these drawbacks. Methods: We performed a training-box based study, performing laparoscopic tasks using conventional laparoscopy and advanced laparoscopic systems in order to assess the influence of these technical drawbacks in order to predict where the biggest advantages of newly developed surgical systems can be expected. Results: The most significant technical drawbacks were two-dimensional vision, disturbed eye-hand target axis and (possibly to a lesser extent) the rigid instruments with a limited five degrees of freedom. Conclusion: Major advances in advanced laparoscopy might only be expected using console-based robot-arm manipulated systems like the daVinci surgical system, or a combination of a high-quality 3-dimensional vision system, restoration of the eye-hand-target axis and the use of an advanced handheld instrument offering seven degrees of freedom such as the Radius surgical. system.