Single site robotic surgery for thoracic diseases

Robotic-assisted thoracic surgery has gained widespread acceptance for various thoracic diseases owing to its surgical accuracy. With recent advances in robotic-surgery devices, the single-site approach has become possible in robotic surgery. Herein, we report the case of single-site robotic surgery for mediastinal tumors by the thoracic approach. We performed robotic surgery with single-site instruments in a 50-year-old male with a mediastinal tumor in the anterior mediastinum. The instruments used were an 8.5-mm endoscope, 5-mm curved non-wristed instruments, and an accessory tracer on the 3-cm-diameter single-port device for the single-site robotic system. The potential benefits of this approach to thoracic surgery are better surgical accuracy and the enhanced operative field of robotic surgery, as well as the potential benefits of single-port thoracoscopic surgery.