Distal pancreatectomy in the new era of minimally invasive surgery: the on-going debate on the cost-effectiveness

We read with great interest the article of Rodriguez et al., “Which method of distal pancreatectomy is cost-effective among open, laparoscopic, or robotic surgery?” (1). In the current climate of limited hospital sources and control of medical costs, the authors afford the interesting topic of the cost-effectiveness evaluation of the robot-assisted distal pancreatectomy (RDP) in comparison to the laparoscopic (LDP) and open approaches (ODP). To accomplish this purpose, they focused their attention on both the clinical and the economical outcomes of the three different techniques.