Robotic-assisted right upper lobectomy: with the further research, robot-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) will be better in future

We are grateful for the reviewers’ comments on our manuscript entitled “Robotic-assisted right upper lobectomy” (1). Robot-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) has been performed for several years with the first robotic lung resections described in 2002 by Melfi et al. (2). An analysis of the U.S. National Cancer Data Base found that the percentage of robotic lobectomies increased from 3% in 2010 up to 9% in 2012 (3). Although the number of robotic lung resections performed are increasing, the primary factor that continues to impede widespread use of the robotic technique is the higher overall cost of RATS relative to the cost of video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) approaches (4-7). We believe that the cost of robotic surgery will decrease as the instrumentation develops and when the pertinent patent becomes overdue