“The low end of the range still assumes continued choppiness with COVID hospitalizations, uncertainty with the timing of the capital quota in China for the remainder of the year, macroeconomic challenges that could impact hospitals and patient spending and a moderation in procedures from elevated levels experienced in January and February this year.”

In context

“r in the robotic-assisted group when compared to the laparoscopic group. In addition, patients who underwent a robotic-assisted procedure had a 1 day shorter length of stay compared to patients in the laparoscopic arm. The authors concluded, in part, that robotic-assisted resections of T4 rectal cancer were associated with a significantly lower conversion rate and shorter hospital stay than laparoscopic surgery. I will now turn to our financial outlook for 2023, starting with procedures. On our last call, we forecasted full year 2023 procedure growth within a range of 12% to 16%. We are now increasing our forecast and expect full year 2023 procedure growth of 18% to 21%. This range continues to reflect the uncertainty associated with the course of the pandemic and macroeconomic risks. The low end of the range still assumes continued choppiness with COVID hospitalizations, uncertainty with the timing of the capital quota in China for the remainder of the year, macroeconomic challenges that could impact hospitals and patient spending and a moderation in procedures from elevated levels experienced in January and February this year. At the high end of the range, we assume COVID-related hospitalizations around the world continue to decline throughout 2023, a capital quota in China is available and macroeconomic challenges do not impact hospital procedure volumes. The range does not reflect significant material supply chain disruptions or hospital capacity constraints similar to what we experienced at the start of the pandemic. Turning to gross profit. We continue to expect our 2023 full year pro forma gross profit margin to be within 68% and 69%. Our actual gross profit margin will vary quarter-to-quarter depending largely on product, regional and trade-in mix and the impact of new product introductions. With respect to operating expenses, on our last call, we forecast pro forma operating expense growth to be be”