Pain Intensity After RObotic Assisted Urological Surgery

Postoperative pain remains a widespread but still underestimated problem. Studies have shown that despite improvements in pain management, many patients still suffer from moderate to severe postoperative pain. Severe pain is associated with decreased patient satisfaction, delayed postoperative ambulation, prolonged length of stay, risk of developing chronic postoperative pain, and increased morbidity and mortality. Therefore, it is of great importance that surgical procedures that result in severe pain and the optimal analgesic strategies for these procedures can be identified. Most recommendations on postoperative pain management (prevention and treatment) are not procedure-specific. However, risk factors for postoperative pain depend on the patient and the procedure.

In order to develop procedure-specific postoperative pain management guidelines, pain must be assessed in a procedure-specific manner. Additionally, data is sparse on relatively new procedures like robotic surgery. A study, Harel et al. compared pain intensities after ureteral reimplantation with robotic or open surgery in children and reported lower pain scores after robotic surgery. This single study reinforces the clinical findings that robotic surgery is associated with less pain. However, pain assessment after robotic urologic surgery has not been evaluated before.

In order to add to the evaluation of postoperative pain in different surgical groups, we wish to evaluate pain intensities after robot-assisted urological surgery. In this cohort study, we seek to provide an estimate of the pain intensities that can be expected after most types of robot-assisted urological surgery in relation to analgesic treatment.