Quality of Recovery After Robotic Surgery

The advent of robotic approach to laparoscopic surgery has transformed the practice of transabdominal procedures, especially those involving the pelvic region, such as, prostatectomy, hysterectomy, among others. In-line with the advantages of robotic intervention (greater access and precision), the type of patients who can undergo this surgery has also evolved. Whereas, morbidly obese patients, who were not amenable to 'open' or even 'laparoscopic' approach because of technical difficulties of gaining access to the operative organ/area; can now safely undergo surgery because of high-fidelity and intuitive robotic instrumentation. However, the robotic technique has its own share of concerns: first, it is difficult for the anesthesiologists to access the patient once the robotic arms are docked in position; and second, the extreme positioning (steep Trendelenberg, anti-Trendelenberg position) required to successfully apply the technique may lead to undue burden/adversity on patient's cardiovascular (tachycardia, hypertension, hypotension), respiratory (decreased lung compliance), and central nervous (elevated intracranial pressures) systems.

Therefore, general anesthesia (GA) techniques employed for robotic surgery should be robust and consistent. The common GA techniques, i.e. inhalational or a total intravenous anesthesia (TIVA) can be used. Advantage of inhalation anesthesia is easy titration of the agent by finely calibrated dial concentration control. In addition, the commonly used inhalation anesthetics such as sevoflurane or desflurane rapidly achieve anesthetic brain concentration and the effect can be efficiently reversed quickly upon discontinuation at the end of surgery. TIVA with intravenous anesthetic like propofol is delivered by via simple or target-controlled infusion pumps. Emerging evidence supports the use of propofol TIVA for it may also proffer decreased incidence of postoperative nausea-and-vomiting, anti-inflammatory effect, and anti-neoplastic action.

The evidence on beneficial effect of prolonged robotic surgery on postoperative patient recovery are scanty, unstructured, and limited only to male patients undergoing radical prostatectomy. For the want of a comprehensive patient assessment protocol, the available outcome study has been able to focus on a limited number of parameters, including, changes in intraocular pressure and the incidence of PONV/postoperative pain. Therefore, for knowing the actual outcome effect of GA for robotic surgery, it is essential to analyze elaborate quality-of-recovery from anesthesia based on compendious patients experiences rather than concentrating on specific end-points (hemodynamic profile, recovery time, etc.).

Quality of recovery-15 (QoR-15), a comprehensive patient-reported measure of quality of post-anesthesia, is an abridged form of the expansive 40-item questionnaire (QoR-40) score. QoR-15 assesses both physical and mental well-being of the patient after surgery under GA and is easier to administer. QoR-15 is the first outcome assessment scale which has been evaluated and validated using the consensus-based standards for the selection of health measurements instruments (COSMIN) and fulfils the requirement for being an effective tool for assessment of postoperative recovery/outcome in clinical trials.

Since there is a paucity of evidence on comprehensive post-anesthesia outcome following major robotic procedures and the choice of GA techniques employed for such procedures are subject to random selection; we aim to undertake this randomized-controlled trial to assess postoperative QoR with QoR-15 questionnaire in patients receiving anesthesia either by propofol administration facilitated by automated closed-loop anesthesia delivery system (CLADS) or desflurane inhalation.