Robotic versus open partial nephrectomy in the context of mild severity complications: a meta-analysis of comparative studies supplemented by meta-regression

Abstract

Study retrieval and quality assessment The literature search included all available comparative studies until April 2022. This process resulted in a total of 180 reports, of which 130 were retrieved from the “Google Scholar,” 45 from the “PubMed,” and 5 from the “CENTRAL” databases, respectively. Of this initial set of reports, 22 were excluded as duplicates, 46 were excluded due to incompatibility of their title with automated means, and 7 were excluded due to incompatibility of their title after a relevant evaluation by the authors. The above procedure resulted in 105 relevant reports toward the evaluation of their content. Of these, 24 were excluded due to unavailable text, resulting in a total of 81 reports with available text for further evaluation. The text from 27 of them was not retrieved, since it did not contain usable statistical data and therefore these reports were excluded, resulting in 54 relevant reports with available text and usable statistical data. Of this set, 11 studies were excluded since they were not comparative, 7 were excluded as meta-analyses, 2 were excluded as they did not contain comparative data on postoperative complications incidence, and lastly 2 were excluded as they reported comparative data only on the effect of each approach on patients' hospitalization costs.