Description: MONDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- Using robotic technology to perform laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) surgery may improve survival rates for prostate cancer patients, a new study suggests.

Prostatectomy involves removal of the prostate gland and some of the surrounding tissue.

Urologic oncologists at the Genitourinary Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, in Philadelphia, compared 50 men who had robotic assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) and 197 men who had conventional LRP.

They found that RALP helped reduce positive surgical margins. This refers to when cancer, seen under a microscope, goes to the edge of a tissue specimen, indicating that there are still cancerous cells in the patient.

The overall positive surgical margin rate for the men who had RALP was six percent, compared with 18 percent for the men who had LRP.

The study was slated to be presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association, in Anaheim,