Transoral Robotic Surgery Alone for Oropharyngeal Cancer

Abstract

As the only modality used for treatment of pathologically low-risk OSCCs, TORS provides high local control and is associated with low surgical morbidity.

Cribriform Adenocarcinoma of the Tongue and Minor Salivary Gland: Transoral Robotic Surgical Resection

“…In general, robotic surgery has gained support across many fields due to the benefits of magnification, 3D visualization, tremor filtration, and instrument stabilization [9]. TORS using the da Vinci surgical system for oropharyngeal carcinoma resection offers well-documented local control with or without adjuvant therapy [18], with decreased postoperative complications, decreased long-term morbidity, and shorter operative times and hospital stays compared to conventional transoral or open approaches [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. Furthermore, when examining the quality of life, patients treated with TORS alone had a return to baseline functional status and overall quality of life at 12 months with only a modest impact on speech at the 6- and 12-month follow-ups [19].…”

Oncological and functional outcomes of transoral surgery for the treatment of oropharyngeal cancer

“…Reported rates of postoperative radiotherapy range from 31 % in Laccoureye's series [13], to 74-85 % [11,12,18] in series reported from the United States, to 92 % of patients in the present study. However, transoral surgery combined with neck dissection does appear to have a clear oncological effect, as evidenced by excellent reported results for transoral surgery and neck dissection without postoperative radiotherapy for selected cases of OPSCC resected with negative margins [27,28]. Thus, depending on pathological findings, transoral surgery may in some cases completely obviate the need for radiotherapy.…”

Transoral robotic surgery for the management of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma of unknown primary

“…This was, however, quickly taken into consideration and an orientation method was developed together with reporting the distance from the tumour to the surgical margins. Following the principles of most TORS protocols, margins above 2 mm were considered free, 0-2 mm close, and 0 mm to be involved [10].…”