ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Surg.
Sec. Surgical Oncology
Retrospective observational study between robotic thyroidectomy via bilateral axillo‑breast approach and conventional open surgery for thyroid cancer
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
- 2Seventh People's Hospital of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Robotic thyroidectomy has shown good acceptance results and improved cosmetic outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of bilateral axillary-breast approach (BABA) robotic thyroidectomy compared with conventional open surgery for the treatment of thyroid cancer. Methods: The clinicopathological features and surgical outcomes of 73 papillary thyroid cancer patients treated by robotic surgery using the BABA approach and 62 papillary thyroid cancer patients treated by open surgery in our department from January 2024 to January 2025 were analyzed and compared. Results: The operation time was longer in the robotic group than in the open surgery group (P=0.001). However, when thyroid cancer requires lymph node dissection in the lateral neck area, the open operation time is longer than that of robotic surgery, although it is no significant (P>0.05). The estimated blood loss was lower in the robotic group than in the open surgery group (P<0.001). Both total number of removed lymph nodes (P=0.019) and metastatic lymph nodes (P=0.002) were higher in the robotic group than in the open surgery group. Postoperative inflammatory reaction was higher in the robotic group than in the open surgery group (P<0.001). No significant difference was observed in the nerve injury or Chyle leakage between the two groups. No recurrence or metastasis was found. Conclusions: Compared with open surgery, BABA robot radical thyroid cancer surgery with lymph node dissection is safety and efficacy, and have advantages such as less intraoperative blood loss, no neck scar. Especially in lateral cervical lymph node dissection, robotic surgery has obvious advantages.
Keywords: thyroid cancer, Bilateral axillo‑breast approach (BABA), da Vinci robot, Open surgery, Lateral neck lymph node dissection
Received: 10 Jul 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kuang, Zhou, Wang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fei Kuang, 15000789545@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.