Patients' Perceptions After Robot-Assisted Surgery: An Integrative Review

Surgical techniques have greatly changed and advanced with the advent of robot-assisted surgery (RAS). Patient outcome measures for RAS generally focus on patient morbidity and mortality, surgical complications, and hospital length of stay; there is limited research on patients’ perceptions of RAS. Researchers conducted an integrative literature review of published research on patient experience and satisfaction after undergoing RAS. They searched nine databases and screened 1,263 articles for eligibility, six of which were critically appraised and synthesized into two main themes: patient satisfaction with RAS and the effect of information sharing on patient satisfaction. There was a dearth of qualitative studies exploring patients’ perceptions after RAS and it was difficult to determine whether patient satisfaction was specifically related to the procedure modality (ie, robotic) or was influenced by other factors (eg, clinical outcomes). Clear differences between patient experience and satisfaction after undergoing RAS versus nonrobotic surgery are not apparent.