Robotic thoracic surgery: cost analysis

Since robotic-assisted thoracic surgery (RVATS) very beginning, cost was a concern when deciding whether or not to offer this new technique to our patients. As it happens to every newly developed technique cost tend to soften throughout time as new equipment providers appear, spreading out RVATS to new and previously unexplored frontiers. When compared to Thoracotomy, RVATS is extremely cost effective. That is not exactly true when the comparison is made with video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). We evaluated the total hospital costs, direct and indirect, associated with RVATS as compared to VATS Lobectomy in our first 4 cases as a business plan to support the implementation of our robotic program. In our initial cases our costs for RVATS outnumbered VATS costs by USD 1,320.79.