Robotic pulmonary lobectomy for lung cancer treatment: program implementation and initial experience.

Objective: To describe the implementation of a robotic thoracic surgery program at a public tertiary teaching hospital and to analyze its initial results.

Methods: This was a planned interim analysis of a randomized clinical trial aimed at comparing video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery and robotic surgery in terms of the results obtained after pulmonary lobectomy. The robotic surgery program developed at the Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, is a multidisciplinary initiative involving various surgical specialties, as well as anesthesiology, nursing, and clinical engineering teams.