Three Surgical Robots Walk Into a Trial. None Wins.

A head-to-head trial of da Vinci, Hugo, and Versius in hysterectomy found no clear performance winner.

12 Jun 2026

A curious thing happens when three rival surgical robots are tested side by side: none of them loses. The COMPAR-HYST trial, run at a referral center for gynecologic surgery, put da Vinci X, Versius, and Hugo through 150 elective laparoscopic hysterectomies performed in 2024. The result was a statistical shrug.

An optimal hysterectomy, the study's composite measure, was achieved in 29 percent of da Vinci cases, 32 percent of Hugo cases, and 24 percent of Versius cases. The gap looks meaningful until the p value arrives: 0.735, comfortably short of significance.

Look closer and small differences surface. Hugo drew less intraoperative blood loss than da Vinci, and both Hugo and Versius diverged from da Vinci on certain operative time measures. Researchers read this as proof that all three machines are clinically sound in trained hands, even if each behaves a little differently on the table.

The study joins a growing pile of head-to-head robotics research published this year, as hospitals running several platforms at once look for data rather than marketing to settle the question. For committees deciding which robot handles which specialty, evidence like this is starting to matter more than brand loyalty.