TORS is a safe, feasible, and minimally invasive alternative to classic open surgery or endoscopic transoral laser surgery in patients with early cancer of the head and neck. With increasing experience, surgical setup as well as operative time will continue to decrease.
Although the present literature reports early findings, without long-term oncologic outcomes, the results are consistently encouraging. Training programs have already yielded successes. Indeed, multiple institutions have shown that transoral robotic surgery programs can be successfully established yielding excellent clinical outcomes. In addition, early studies of swallowing function following transoral robotic surgery show swallowing outcomes that are superior to some of the reported chemoradiation results for equivalent lesions.
The flexible CO2 laser offers a unique advantage of precise incisions and may provide a valuable tool for both tumor extirpation and the creation of flaps for transoral robotic reconstruction.
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