Intracorporeal versus extracorporeal anastomosis for minimally invasive right colectomy: A multi-center propensity score-matched comparison of outcomes.

BACKGROUND:The primary objective of this study was to retrospectively compare short-term outcomes of intracorporeal versus extracorporeal anastomosis for minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic-assisted right colectomies for benign and malignant disease. Recent studies suggest potential short-term outcomes advantages for the intracorporeal anastomosis technique. METHODS:This is a multicenter retrospective propensity score-matched comparison of intracorporeal and extracorporeal anastomosis techniques for laparoscopic and robotic-assisted right colectomy between January 11, 2010, and July 21, 2016. RESULTS:After propensity score-matching, there were a total of 1029 minimal invasive surgery cases for analysis-379 right colectomies (335 robotic-assisted and 44 laparoscopic) done with an intracorporeal anastomosis and 650 right colectomies (253 robotic-assisted and 397 laparoscopic) done with an extracorporeal anastomosis. There were no significant differences in any preoperative patient characteristics between groups. The minimally invasive intracorporeal anastomosis group had significantly longer operative times (p