Background: This article investigated whether robotic-assisted liver surgery versus laparoscopic liver surgical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has similar or different short- and long-term clinical outcomes.

Methods: A total of 3049 patients from the National Cancer Database who received minimally invasive surgery (ie, robotic or laparoscopic surgery) for stage I HCC cancers between 2010 to 2015, of which 123 had robotic and 2926 had laparoscopic surgeries performed, were identified. Logistic regression was applied to evaluate short-term outcomes. Cox proportional hazards models were applied to estimate all-cause mortality at 1-year, 3-years, and 5-years after surgery, adjusting for potential confounders. Propensity score-matched analyses were conducted to compare long-term outcomes between robotic and laparoscopic surgeries.

Results: Robotic surgery was associated with improved overall survival, with 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates (SRs) of 0.92, 0.75, and 0.63 compared with laparoscopic surgery SRs of 0.86, 0.60, and 0.45, respectively (P value <.01). Multivariate analyses showed that robotic compared with laparoscopic surgery had significantly lower 5-year total mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.64 and 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.45%-0.93% for intent-to-treat; HR, 0.62 and 95% CI, 0.42%-0.91% for end-treatment analyses). Similar results were found in propensity score matched analyses; robotic surgery was associated with improved overall survival compared with laparoscopic surgery (HR, 0.64 and 95% CI, 0.43%-0.96% for intent-to-treat; HR, 0.59 and 95% CI, 0.39%-0.90% for end-treatment).

Conclusions: Robotic surgery is not inferior to laparoscopic surgery in treating early-stage HCC and may be associated with improved long-term survival.