【CSCO 2022 Preview】Application of robotic surgery in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and current situation in China

Head and neck cancer is a group of malignant tumors that widely occur in epithelial cells in the sinuses, nasal cavity, mouth and throat, common head and neck cancers include laryngeal cancer, thyroid cancer, oral cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer, of which squamous cell carcinoma accounts for more than
90%.
In China, in 2018, there were nearly 70,000 new head and neck tumors (except nasopharyngeal cancer), and the number of deaths exceeded 35,000, and it was increasing year by year
.
Although nasopharyngeal carcinoma is rare in the West, it is highly common in southern China, accounting for 47%
of the world's new cases every year.

Head and neck cancer is radically resected, and after surgery, very conspicuous incision scars will form in the neck and head, which will seriously affect the appearance
.
There is a surgical method that can achieve a complete radical treatment effect without leaving visible scars on the head and neck, which can avoid the patient's concerns about the appearance of the operation, that is, the use of da Vinci robot-assisted head and neck surgery
.

Since the U.
S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the application of transoral robotic surgery (TORS) in oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal surgery in 2009, TORS for head and neck tumors has been widely developed worldwide, and the surgical site has expanded from oropharynx and hypopharynx to anatomical fields
such as larynx, parapharynx, nasopharynx and skull base.

Transoral robotic surgery provides a new surgical treatment plan for patients with head and neck tumors, and many clinical studies have also followed up the long-term prognosis of patients treated with head and neck tumors, confirming that this surgical method can improve the quality of life of patients after surgery and obtain satisfactory tumor prognosis
.

Since 2016, a small number of literature has reported attempts to use da Vinci robots to treat head and neck tumor TORS, but the overall number of reported cases is small, and the long-term survival data
of malignant tumors are lacking.

What head and neck tumors can be operated on using robotic surgery? How can clinicians successfully conduct TORS? On November 7, 2022, the 25th National Congress of Clinical Oncology and the 2022 CSCO Annual Conference invited Professor Zhang Bin, Director of Head and Neck Surgery, Peking University Cancer Hospital, to give us an in-depth explanation of the application of robotic surgery in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and the current situation
in China.

Professor Zhang Bin, as the first person in the oral approach of da Vinci thyroid cancer surgery in China, used da Vinci robot to carry out oral radical thyroidectomy in 2018, and has been committed to promoting the application of robotic surgery in head and neck tumors, although compared with developed European and American countries, domestic TORS is still in its infancy, but with the rapid development of China's economy, I believe that domestic colleagues who are interested in TORS will definitely catch up
.

Resources:

https://mp.
weixin.
qq.
com/s/pQOPdSQYjZP3JAXfLrfE1Q

https://mp.
weixin.
qq.
com/s/nYVHzcDf4L8FcaPqpMCmIQ

https://mp.
weixin.
qq.
com/s/ePeqsEDnviNSZWWB868XlQ

https://mp.
weixin.
qq.
com/s/PvLIPn-m0jwC0Y4zHhqfCA