Primum non nocere: robots and spinal surgery

In this article, Lieber et al. performed a retrospective analysis of data in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database, comparing 257 patients who underwent robot-assisted lumbar fusion with 257 matched controls who underwent conventional lumbar fusion. After controlling for various patient factors, they did not find a significant difference in minor or major complications between the two groups. However, they report increased hospital costs and length of stay in the robot-assisted group, compared with the conventional lumbar fusion group.