Laparoscopic versus robot assisted repair of ventral hernia

Since the introduction of robot assisted surgery, its costs and anticipated benefits compared with those for conventional surgery have been debated. For some procedures, particularly radical prostatectomy, randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews have shown better outcomes with robot assisted surgery.1 Ventral hernia repair is a common procedure that accounted for an estimated 348 000 operations costing $3.2bn (£2.59bn; €2.85bn) in the US in 2006 alone,2 but the only evidence so far has come from retrospective studies with a high risk of bias.13 Now a linked study by Olavarria and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.m2457) reports a multicentre, blinded, randomised controlled trial conducted in Texas, US, comparing the …