Minimally Invasive Techniques in Surgery

Dear Colleagues,

Since its introduction into clinical practice, minimally invasive surgery (laparoscopy and robotics) has achieved increasing success, such that a robotic approach is currently used in over 50% of patients undergoing surgery for urological disease and is also very useful and effective in abdominal and gynecological surgery. The success of robot-assisted surgery is due to its specific advantages, such as magnification of the operative field due to three-dimensional vision, greater accuracy of the instruments with seven degrees of motion, primary surgeon camera control, and tremor filtration. These features permit the reproduction of the same surgical step of open surgery with the benefits of a minimally invasive technique, overcoming the limitations of laparoscopy. For these reasons, robot-assisted surgery has become the gold standard approach for the treatment of many urological diseases, and it is also being increasingly applied in other surgical specialties. In particular, robotic techniques have so far achieved the greatest results when applied in the treatment of prostate cancer, ensuring exciting results in terms of peri-operative, oncological, and functional outcomes. A robotic approach has also been demonstrated to be useful when used for radical cystectomy and partial nephrectomy. Similarly, the accuracy of robotic suture can improve the functional outcome of pyeloplasty with respect to laparoscopy. Although the laparoscopic approach is the standard procedure for adrenalectomy, many trials have shown exciting results when adrenalectomy was performed using a robotic technique. Due to its increasing and widespread use, indications for the application of a robotic and laparoscopic approach have been further extended to treatment of pancreatic, gastric, and colon tumors, complicated diverticular disease, retroperitoneal lymph nodes, renal transplantation, as well as in combined surgery. Therefore, the following topics will be covered in this Special Issue:

• Evolution of minimally invasive surgery in urology, gynecology, general surgery, and other surgical specialties;
• Innovative minimally invasive techniques;
• New applications of robotic approach in surgery;
• Combined robotic surgery

Prof. Dr. Ettore Mearini
Dr. Giovanni Cochetti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• laparoscopy;
• robotic assisted surgery;
• minimally invasive techniques;
• innovative surgical techniques;
• urological disease;
• oncological surgery;
• gynecological disease;
• perioperative outcome;
• oncological outcome;
• functional outcome