Robotic Versus Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Lung Resection During Early Program Development

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study is to compare robotic portal (RP) to video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) pulmonary resections for early stage non-small cell lung cancer with respect to health care resource utilization during the first year of a robotic surgery program in thoracic oncology. METHODS: Patients who underwent anatomic lung resections using RP (n = 42) or VATS (n = 96) for early stage non-small cell lung cancer between April 2014 and March 2015 at a single institution were identified. Patient-level case costing data for hospital and home care-associated resource variables were recorded. We adopted a health care payer perspective and 30-day posthospital discharge/death time horizon. Parametric or nonparametric tests were used as appropriate and incremental cost difference using 10,000 bootstrap samples using bias-corrected and accelerated method to generate 95% confidence intervals for total cost. RESULTS: Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics were comparable between the two groups. The median total hospital cost per patient was $15,247 (95% confidence interval: $15,643 to $18,945) in the RP cohort, compared with $12,131 (95% confidence interval: $13,218 to $15,879) in the VATS cohort (n = 96; p < 0.001). Longer operating times in the RP group were the main driver of higher hospital costs. Post-hoc analysis of mean operating room time for first 20 RP procedures versus remaining 22 RP procedures found a mean difference of 71 minutes (p = 0.004), resulting in an intraoperative cost difference of $883.38 (p = 0.036). CONCLUSIONS: A micro-costing analysis demonstrates that RP pulmonary resection for early stage non-small cell lung cancer utilizes more health care resource dollars when compared with VATS during early program development, but offers similar perioperative outcomes.