Penetrance of Robot-assisted Kidney Transplantation in Surgical Practice at Referral European Transplant Centres: An Audit Within the ERUS-RAKT Working Group

Progress in technique, technology, and available surgical tools have elevated the role of robotics in kidney transplantation (KT) [1–4]. Following the standardisation of the technique in the living donor (LD) setting, a number of European centres with large experience in both KT and robotic surgery have recently implemented robotassisted kidney transplantation (RAKT) in several clinical scenarios [5]. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding the pattern of RAKT utilisation in the real-life setting. To fill this gap, we queried prospectively maintained databases from seven European referral KT centres to identify patients who underwent KT from LDs or deceased donors (DDs) between January 2017 and December 2022. A joinpoint analysis was performed to assess the trend of RAKT adoption within the study period [6], estimating the annual percentage change (APC).