4. Reassigning left−/right-hand control in the console

Dr. Atallah and his group followed up their initial case report by documenting their experi­ence with four additional RATS-TME operations performed for select, distal rectal cancers [20]. The cohort included three male and one female patient with average age of 44years and a BMI of 29kg/m2; tumor locations ranged from 1 to 5cm from the anal verge. The operative times aver­aged 376minutes, and estimated blood loss was 200cc. Patients stayed in the hospital an average of 4days postoperatively, and all nal pathology reports demonstrated a mesorectal specimen that was complete or near complete with an R0 resec­tion in all cases; of note, an average of 27 lymph nodes was contained within each specimen (range 15–39). At 9-month follow-up, one patient experienced a wound hematoma, another patient was found to have an asymptomatic subsegmen­tal pulmonary embolism, and a third was read­mitted for dehydration secondary to high ileostomy output. There was no evidence of recurrence within this timeframe. An additional case series in 2015 performed by Dr. Huscher and colleagues demonstrated similar results [21]. In their series, seven patients (three men, four women) underwent RATS-TME with a transab­dominal laparoscopic vessel ligation and colonic mobilization. The average age was 63.2 years, average BMI was 29.9 kg/m