[Manually-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy].
The number of patients suffering from terminal renal failure awaiting kidney transplantation has continued to increase. Since the number of available cadaver donor kidneys has largely remained unchanged, a special publicity campaign achieved that almost one-half of the kidneys transplanted in Basle come from live donors. We performed a laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy in 14 patients between March 1998 and August 1999. Despite good experience regarding transplant function and patient satisfaction, the hand-assisted technique was introduced in 1999 because of the long average operating time of 230 min (200-270) and warm ischemia time of 7.5 min (4-9). In the 33 operations performed up to now, the average operating time and warm ischemia time could be significantly reduced to 185 min (135-240) and 2.4 min (1.5-4), respectively. Most recently, the technique of retroperitoneoscopic live donor nephrectomy was successfully employed in 4 patients and could possibly represent the method of choice for the future.
Urologische Universitätsklinik beider Basel, Spitalstrasse 21, 4031 Basel/Schweiz.
F
F
Stoffel
T H
TH
Forster
J
J
Steiger
T C
TC
Gasser
T
T
Sulser
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D010535:Laparoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D019520:Living Donors; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009392:Nephrectomy / Q000379:methods*; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D013996:Time and Motion Studies; D020858:Tissue and Organ Harvesting / Q000379:methods