ArticleJournal of robotic surgery2026
Robot-associated inpatient hospital activity in Germany, 2019-2025: nationwide trends in coded robot categories and diagnostic case mix.
Article in Journal of robotic surgery, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Robot-assisted surgery has spread from urology into several other surgical fields, and different categories of robotic system are now coded separately in Germany. This nationwide descriptive time-series analysis used aggregated hospital data of the Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System for 2019 to 2025. All inpatient hospital cases carrying at least one code of the group for use of a surgical robot (group 5-987 of the German Operation and Procedure Classification) were included, and annual case volume, the coded robot categories, principal diagnoses grouped at the three-character level, sex, age, clinical complexity and length of stay were described, together with selected index procedures counted with and without a robot code. The annual number of cases increased 3.78-fold, from 32,691 in 2019 to 123,706 in 2025, and rose in every year. Prostate cancer remained the most frequent principal diagnosis group: its case number almost doubled from 14,796 to 29,407 while its share fell from 45.3% to 23.8%. Osteoarthritis of knee became the second most frequent, rising from 1,936 to 21,447 cases. The proportion of female cases increased from 26.1% to 40.9%. Among hospital cases with the code for radical prostatovesiculectomy, the proportion also carrying a robot code rose from 52.9% to 85.1%, and for knee endoprosthesis implantation from 1.1% to 8.9%. Recorded robot-associated inpatient hospital activity almost quadrupled over seven years, and both the coded robot categories and the diagnostic composition broadened. These data describe recorded activity and its composition but do not provide information on outcomes, costs or appropriateness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.