Laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy: initial experience.
Transplanting a kidney graft harvested from a live donor has been proposed and used to shorten the waiting time of kidney transplant candidates and to increase the graft pool. Live donor renal transplants have demonstrated better results in term of graft survival rates, compared to renal transplants harvested from brain dead donor. Recently, laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy has been introduced to reduce the live procurement morbidity. This lower morbidity may result in increased acceptance of the donor operation. We initiated a program of laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy in January 1997 and up until June 1998, three cases were successfully performed in our department. The purpose of this paper was to report the first case of this program and its first year of follow-up.
Defechereux
T
T
Department of Surgery and Transplantation, CHU Sart-Tilman, Liège, Belgium.
Hamoir
E
E
Detry
O
O
De Roover
A
A
Bonnet
P
P
Honoré
P
P
Meurisse
M
M
D000293:Adolescent; D001926:Brain Death; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006084:Graft Rejection / Q000601:surgery; D006085:Graft Survival; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000379:methods; D010535:Laparoscopy; D019520:Living Donors; D008875:Middle Aged; D009392:Nephrectomy; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement