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These days, hospitals and urologists are competing for prostate cancer patients by promoting cutting-edge robotic surgery. Among other things, advertisements suggest that patients will suffer fewer complications after robotic surgery than after conventional surgery.
In this study, researchers surveyed more than 600 men (mostly aged 66 to 74) who had undergone either robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (66%) or open retropubic radical prostatectomy (34%) for prostate cancer an average of 14 months previously. “Moderate or big” problems with continence were reported by 27% of men in the open-surgery group and 33% of those in the robotic group (P=0.11). After controlling for potential confounders, robotically treated patients we…