Fig. 1.

Differences between open surgical procedure and robot-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) procedure for thymectomy. The financial differences are shown among institutions performing RATS procedures, in which institutions performed the da Vinci® Surgical System (dVS) operation 100, 200 or 300 times per year. Figures are based on data contained in Tables 1A, 1B, 2 and 3. Since the purchase price and 5-year service life cost are set by the government, the cost per RATS procedure in the institution obviously decreases with the number of procedures performed annually.