The Korean Society of Single Port Surgery confirmed this week that single-port robotic surgery using Intuitive's da Vinci SP system has expanded beyond benign gynecological conditions into early-stage cervical, ovarian and endometrial cancers. The society certified 33 surgeons in its first year running a formal certification program, judged not by case volume but by video-based review of surgical technique. The procedure uses a single 1.5 to 2 centimeter incision at the navel, versus the multiple incisions of standard robotic surgery. Society president Kim Tae-joong, who performed Korea's first single-port procedure in May 2008, said studies comparing it to conventional multi-port robotic surgery show no significant differences in operating time, blood loss or hospital stay, but less pain, according to Seoul Economic Daily.
Why Moving From Fibroids to Cancer Is the Real Milestone
Benign-condition surgery is forgiving: if the single-port approach runs into trouble, the clinical stakes are lower. Cancer surgery is not. Extending single-port robotic technique to early-stage cervical, ovarian and endometrial cancer means Korean surgeons are confident the approach matches multi-port robotic surgery on margins and completeness of resection — the metrics that actually matter in oncology, not just cosmetic incision size. That confidence, built on nearly two decades of single-port experience since 2008, is what turns a niche technique into a mainstream oncologic tool.
It also matters because gynecologic cancer surgery has been one of the last holdouts for minimally invasive robotic approaches, given concerns after a 2018 US trial found worse outcomes with minimally invasive hysterectomy for cervical cancer compared with open surgery. A national surgical society formally certifying surgeons for cancer-specific single-port work, with safety judged on technique review rather than raw case counts, is a direct answer to that lingering caution.
How This Fits the Global Surgical Robotics Race
Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci SP remains the only commercially dominant single-port robotic platform, giving the company a foothold in a sub-category that newer entrants — including Johnson & Johnson's Ottava and CMR Surgical's Versius — have not yet matched. Korea has emerged as one of the platform's most aggressive adopters globally, a pattern consistent with the country's broader push into robotic surgery infrastructure, including hospitals expanding single-port use into heart and other complex procedures.
The trade-off is training capacity. Single-port surgery demands more dexterity from surgeons operating through one narrow channel instead of several, which is why the society built a technique-based certification system rather than simply counting procedures. With only 33 surgeons certified in year one, scaling this beyond major academic centers like Samsung Medical Center and Chung-Ang University Gwangmyeong Hospital will take years, even as demand from cancer patients seeking smaller incisions grows faster than the training pipeline can supply certified operators.