Robotic assisted laparoscopic surgery for the treatment of kidney cancer: current status in 2011

Abstract

Surgical resection is the gold standart method of treatment of renal masses. In recent years laparoscopic surgery has become a popular method with the same oncologic results, less complication rates and shorter hospital stay. Nonetheless, because of technical adversity, difficulty of bleeding control and long warm ischemia time at partial nephrectomy laparoscopic methods have best results only at experienced hands. In recent years, some techniques had been developed to increase the efficacy of laparoscopic surgery. In recent years with the introduction of Da Vinci system (Intuitive Surgical Corporation, Sunnyvale, California, USA) robotic assisted laparoscopic surgery has been popular especially for radical prostatectomy. Although above-mentioned system had higher cost, it is used also for renal masses because of shorter learning curve and better ergonomy. Papers has conflicting results for robotic assisted laparoscopic surgery for renal masses, but in can be said that it has same results in experienced hands. However, we do not know long termdata and oncologic results of robotic assisted laparoscopic surgery for renal masses.