Abstract No. 501 Is interventional radiology losing the race for robots? A cross-sectional analysis of published literature on robotics in endovascular interventions

Remote catheter guidance with robotic and magnetic technology is the next frontier of endovascular interventions. Cardiology has been trailblazing their use in both venous and arterial interventions. This study analyzes the published literature as a proxy to compare each endovascular field’s progress in implementation of these technologies. A search of the published English-language, MEDLINE indexed literature was performed querying PubMed with the keywords “robotic” in combination with “interventional”, “interventional radiology”, “cardiology”, “vascular surgery”, “neurosurgery”, “transcatheter”, and “endovascular”. Results were manually classified independently by two reviewers for relevance, specialty of corresponding author, type of study, general topic, and year of publication. In cases of discrepancies, a third reviewer served as an independent tie breaker. Preclinical studies published in engineering journals were reviewed for author affiliations and excluded if not attached to a medical department. A total of 4606 articles were identified. Of those, 325 were deemed relevant. Cardiology had the most publications with 199 and vascular surgery had the second most with 82. Both neurosurgery and interventional radiology (IR) had 22 publications each. The majority of papers (118) were observational cohort studies. Reviews and commentary were the second most with 101 papers. Fifty-seven preclinical studies were attached with a medical department. Case reports accounted for 29 of the publications and prospective comparative trials numbered 20. A total of 14,125 subjects were included with a vast majority from cardiology (11,847). The majority of papers were classified into electrophysiology (154) and percutaneous coronary intervention (63). Only a single patient came from IR of a total of 22 studies. Two small cohorts were published on PAD and UAE, but both had vascular surgeons as the corresponding authors. The use of robotic or magnetic catheter steering is already a reality and cardiology and is burgeoning in endovascular vascular and neurosurgery. Interventional radiology lags behind.