RT thyroidectomy and parathyroidectomy can be performed safely by specialist endocrine surgeons, early in their learning curve, without an increased complication rate, albeit with significantly longer operating times.

Although the operating time was lower with IONM than with visualization alone, the shortened surgical time may not seem to have great clinical relevance. However, the shorter the nerve is identified the lower is the surgeon's level of stress. We think that it is important to use IONM to decrease the identification time of RLN in the course of thyroidectomy.

No abstract

To our knowledge, this is the first study comparing robotic versus laparoscopic resection of pheochromocytoma. Our results show that the robotic approach is similar to the laparoscopic regarding safety and efficacy. The lower morbidity, less immediate postoperative pain, and shorter hospital stay observed in the robotic approach warrant further investigation in future larger studies.

Thirty-one patients who underwent robotic posterior retroperitoneal adrenalectomy and 31 consecutive patients who underwent laparoscopic posterior retroperitoneal adrenalectomy from a prospective institutional review board-approved database.Main Outcome Measures: Demographic and clinical parameters, operative time, presence of complications, length of hospital stay, and pain score on postoperative days 1 and 14. Results:The mean (SEM) tumor sizes for the robotic and laparoscopic groups were similar (3.1 [0.2] and 3.0 [0.2] cm, respectively; P=.48). For all patients, the mean (SEM) skin-to-skin operative times were similar in both groups (163.2 [10.1] and 165.7 [9.5] minutes, respec-