We were some of us at the French ENT Society who wanted to take the opportunity of the venue of the IFOS meeting in Paris this year to promote innovations in oto-rhino-laryngology head and neck surgery.

We decided to make the point through an international state of the art report and have chosen Robotics and Digital guidance in ENT-Head and Neck Surgery as the subject of this book. The reason was because it is obviously the main “break through” in our surgical practice which may dramatically modify our surgical procedures and in even a near future our thought and way to manage the different pathologies affecting the ear, the nose and sinus cavities and the throat. This difficult task was given to Philippe Céruse and Bertrand Lombard, both of them from the Medical School of Lyon and pioneers on both fields of robotics and computed assisted surgical systems. They made the idea a real success book with a panel of international collaborators. I want to underline that I have been impressed by the fact, as the president of the French University National Council for Otorhinolaryngology for the last 8years, that most of the recently promoted colleagues to an academic position were working on robotics and computed assisted surgical systems "in good intelligence" whatever the fields of ENT-HNS.

All the partners of our specialty are concerned by robotics and navigation systems but at different levels. For laryngologists and head and neck surgeons, the Da Vinci Robot^® has provided a dramatic modification of their surgical procedures; and thus of the outcomes for the patients. New robots are now introduced which enlarge the hope of the future; for the rhinologist, computed assisted surgery guided by image has been a tremendous advance although robots dedicated to sinus surgery are still under development; for otologist and neurotologist, surgical robots have emerged in different universities in Europe and US dedicated either to cochlear implantation or middle ear surgery. All these robots are of level0 (without autonomy) or 1 (robot assistance) in a scale graded to 5 (full automation)^{1.Yang et al. Sci robot 2, eaam 8638 (2017).} . These robots are now entering into the OR to evaluate their safety and efficiency.

The main questions to be solved in the next future are the risk/benefit as well as the cost/benefit for the patient and the institution. These innovations have many implications for the ENT and HNS fields: 1) creating new intraoperative control systems as far as robot will evolve towards more automation, 2) training a surgeon already practicing conventional surgery or educating residents and fellows; 3) evolution of indications and surgical procedures in the different pathologies affecting our field.

In conclusion this book provides a comprehensive and useful review on robots and navigation systems in otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery, and all the contributors for this work have to be warmly congratulated.

© 2017  Elsevier Masson SAS. Tous droits réservés.

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