A case of simultaneous robot-assisted surgery for oropharyngeal cancer and colorectal cancer

We report a case who underwent robot-assisted surgery simultaneously for oropharyngeal and colorectal cancer using a da Vinci surgical robot. A 78-year-old man with lesions of the right soft palate was radiologically and pathologically diagnosed with cT2N1M0 p16-negative oropharyngeal cancer. Transoral robotic surgery （TORS） was scheduled two weeks after neck dissection and facial artery ligation. Since a preoperative PET-CT indicated abnormal uptake from the sigmoid colon to the rectum, a lower endoscopy was scheduled after neck dissection surgery. However, because advanced colorectal cancer caused obstructive ileus after the neck dissection, emergency lower endoscopy was performed and a stent was inserted. There was an urgent need to treat the colorectal cancer as well, so robot-assisted low anterior resection （Rob-LAR） followed by TORS was performed simultaneously under general anesthesia. There have been no reports of simultaneous operations for oropharyngeal and colorectal cancers by robot-assisted surgery. We report the merits and demerits of performing simultaneous operations by robot-assisted surgery.