Robotic versus Endoscopic Thyroidectomy for Thyroid Cancers: A Multi-Institutional Analysis of Early Postoperative Outcomes and Surgical Learning Curves

Table 2

Comparison of pathologic findings between patients treated with robotic thyroidectomy and endoscopic thyroidectomy.

	Robot group (𝑛=1769)	Endoscopy group (𝑛=843)	𝑃 value
Pathology			NS
Papillary carcinoma	1758 (99.3%)	837 (99.3%)
Follicular carcinoma	5 (0.3%)	6 (0.7%)
Medullary carcinoma	5 (0.3%)
Hurthle cell carcinoma	1 (0.1%)
Tumor size, mean (cm)	0.5 ± 0.5	0.4 ± 0.5	NS
Multifocality			NS
Yes	469 (26.5)	110 (13.0%)
No	1300 (73.5)	733 (87.0%)
Bilaterality			NS
Yes	208 (11.8%)	72 (8.5%)
No	1561 (88.2%)	771 (91.5%)
Mean retrieved central LN (𝑛)	4.5 ± 2.6	2.9 ± 1.7	<0.001
Mean metastatic central LN (𝑛)	1.2 ± 0.9	1.0 ± 0.7	NS
TNM stage
T1	905 (51.2%)	513 (60.9%)	0.011
T2	16 (0.9%)	15 (1.8%)
T3	841 (47.5%)	314 (37.2%)
T4a	7 (0.4%)	1 (0.1%)
N0	1131 (64.0%)	605 (71.7%)	0.001
N1a	570 (32.2%)	224 (26.6%)
N1b	68 (3.8%)	14 (1.7%)
Stage			0.002
Stage I	1480 (83.7%)	750 (89.0%)
Stage II	275 (15.5%)	92 (10.9%)
Stage IVa	14 (0.8%)	1 (0.1%)

LN: lymph node.
TNM: tumor-node-metastasis.