Background : Robotic surgery is being performed a lot all over the world, and complex surgeries are also being attempted with robots. Donor hepatectomy is also difficult because of accurate anatomical comprehension of liver and advanced surgical technique are needed, but it is being performed with a robot nowadays. The purpose of this study is to compare the laparoscopic donor hepatectomy and the robot donor hepatectomy and to find out the advantages of robotic surgery.

Methods : We retrospectively reviewed the cases performed in Gangnam severance Hospital between November, 1 2018 with July, 31 2022. During this time, 51 Patients received laparoscopic donor hepatectomy and 6 patients received robotic donor hepatectomy.

Results : All patient received operation without open conversion. The overall median operation time of laparoscopic donor hepatectomy was 381 ± 72 mins and the median intraoperative bleeding amount of laparoscopic donor hepatectomy was 469 ± 279 ml. For robot donor hepatectomy, median operation time was 419 ± 43 and the median intraoperative bleeding amount was 191 ± 97 ml. Comparing warm ischemic time and post operative hospital stay duration, 8.3 ± 3.0 mins and 12.1 ± 5.1 mins, 8.12 ± 2.5 days and 8.5 ± 1.0 days for Laparoscopic donor hepatectomy and robot donor hepatectomy respectively.

Conclusions : Donor hepatectomy is complicated and difficulty operation. However, these data suggest that performing robotic donor hepatectomy by expert surgeon has some advantages over laparoscopic donor hepatectomy. If the sample size of robotic cases is increased as much as laparoscopic cases, more accurate data can be obtained later.