Myth busting patient’s pain: comparing robotic-assisted verses open radical prostatectomies

Radical prostatectomy (1) is one of the most common treatments for locally advanced prostate cancer (PCa). Robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) is the predominant surgical approach in many industrialised countries (2). One of the most common purported benefits of RARP over open radical prostatectomy (ORP) is reduced pain and analgesic requirement, however, a scarcity of reliable studies exist to validate this claim (3,4). Intuitively, the more minimally invasive technique can be reasoned to reduce patient’s pain both intraoperatively and in the weeks following. Whilst being well-intentioned, this rational is not supported in the literature.